


before that, and colder

by RoamingSignals



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arranged Marriage, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Modern Royalty, Non-Linear Narrative, Open Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2020-11-22 03:23:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20867399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoamingSignals/pseuds/RoamingSignals
Summary: Jaehyun is a man now, but he wasn't always. He was a child once, and one day he will be more than a man — a king.He watches Doyoung walk away and decides that now, in this moment, he is a coward.#S025





	before that, and colder

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to L, E, and D, who all held my hand when I needed it. Which was the entire time.
> 
> As a writer, this was a fun challenge! I hope that the prompter enjoys what I came up with, and that everyone is very nice to Kim Doyoung, who is just doing his best.

"Husband."

Jaehyun looks up from his desk. There are papers everywhere, not in complete disarray but in something uncomfortably close to chaos. Doyoung stands in the doorway of his office, that tight line of his mouth too familiar. Jaehyun sighs. "Yes?"

Doyoung only calls him husband when he's unhappy, and he's always unhappy.

Joohyun has a wonderful poker face, but these kinds of conversations are too common for her to be less than amused. "Should I leave?" she asks, standing up from where she's leaning on the desk. Truly, Jaehyun should chastise her for leaning on it, as it's mahogany, and also for her sitting in his presence, but that's the old way of things. And Jaehyun has no interest in mahogany.

"No need," Doyoung says, stoic save that brutal line. There's tension in his shoulders, as always. Sometimes Jaehyun wishes he could shake the man, see if it helps him relax, or something. Doyoung's eyes cut into Jaehyun, as though he knows what Jaehyun is thinking and, as always, does not approve. "I just wanted to inform you that I'm headed out into town."

Jaehyun knows what that means.

Joohyun, unfortunately, also knows. Her eyes drift to the papers on the desk and she busies herself tidying them up. She's laughing on the inside, Jaehyun is certain.

"Alright." Jaehyun makes an ugly red mark through a line on his paper. "Bring Jungwoo, won't you?"

Doyoung smiles without teeth. "Of course." He inclines his head towards Joohyun, who bows easily, low. And then he's out the door, shutting it gently behind him.

Doyoung probably cares about things like mahogany and the old way of doing things. Jaehyun rolls his eyes at it all.

"Into town, hmm?" Joohyun flicks her gaze up to Jaehyun's profile, and he pointedly does not look at her. "Is that what they're calling it these days?"

"You'll have to be more specific," Jaehyun says lightly. It's not fair to his advisor for him to take out his frustration on her. He focuses all his negative energy into the pen on his hand and hopes it doesn't snap. "This contract is a mess."

"It fits right in."

Jaehyun looks at her flatly. "I'll have you fired."

Joohyun is unimpressed with the threat. Still amused. "Your kingdom would be in ruins."

"It's not my kingdom," Jaehyun reminds her, handing her the contract he's spent the past half hour marking up. It looks like a failing grade, with all the cruel red lines. "Not yet."

"And your mother would never fire me." Joohyun is too certain of herself, but she deserves to be confident. Jaehyun's mother would certainly never fire Joohyun, who sometimes seems to be the only voice of reason in the entire royal court.

"You think she would oppose me?" Jaehyun asks.

They both know she would.

"The queen?" Joohyun looks over the contract and circles something in blue. "Oh, she most certainly would."

Jaehyun laughs and moves on to the next thing in his to-do list.

"Nothing has changed then, between the two of you?" Joohyun asks. She's back to leaning on Jaehyun's desk. Her suit jacket hangs on the back of a perfectly good chair she isn't using, but they've long established a casual relationship inside Jaehyun's office; they spend too much time together for anything else.

Still. "Between my mother and I? I wouldn't say so."

There are some things Jaehyun would rather not talk about.

* * *

Maybe, in another lifetime, a simpler one, Jaehyun would marry for love.

In this lifetime, Jaehyun has so much power, so much prestige, so much privilege, and if marrying for love is the one thing that's out of his reach, he supposes there are worse lifetimes.

He'd rather have the power to change things than wait for something to happen. People are complicated, but Jaehyun likes to think he's good with them. Happiness cannot be bought, but it can be cornered and created and caught, if you put in the effort.

No, Jaehyun never thought he’d marry for love, but perhaps he should be more realistic in other ways. People are complicated, yes, and Jaehyun is good with them, and happiness can be created, but sometimes people are so complicated that they ruin their own happiness.

Perhaps Doyoung is one of those people. Perhaps they both are.

* * *

Jaehyun would like to believe that he did something to Doyoung to make his husband hate him, but he's searched through their timeline and finds nothing. Or rather, everything, since every aspect of Jaehyun draws down the corners of Doyoung's mouth, and it started the moment they met.

Some people are just not meant to get along.

Jaehyun knows this, intellectually, but his heart never wants to accept it. Naturally, he's a people pleaser — he wants to please his father, and after he passed, his mother, and he wants to do well so that the people will love him, but that's no way for a king to be. A king demands respect, doesn't beg for love, and that's the man Jaehyun is now.

He will not beg Doyoung for love, and certainly will not beg for forgiveness.

The first time they meet, Jaehyun is 19 and Doyoung is 20, and Jaehyun extends his hand only to be sneered at. "Your Highness," Doyoung says, tone perfectly civil, and over the years Jaehyun learns that Doyoung is wonderful at pretending pleasantries. It burns, a little, that at their first meeting Doyoung already decided that Jaehyun was worth his open derision.

Jaehyun's hand falls back to his side and Doyoung bows to him, submitting, and something in Jaehyun's stomach sours.

"Plenty of people are happy in arranged marriages," his mother told him from a young age. His own parents were a product of politics, and they never fell in love but they were close friends. His mother mourned for months when his father passed. "It's what you make of it."

There's a hope that Jaehyun hadn't realized he was holding, and it sinks in the face of his future husband.

"I hope you had safe travels," he says, and Doyoung nods.

"Yes, we did."

Perhaps that is the most pleasant conversation they will ever have.

* * *

Doyoung returns too late to be proper, flushes red even as he hides his face with his scarf. He's smiling. He looks like a different person. It is always this way. He leaves Jaehyun miserable and returns with stars in his eyes, only for them to dim until the next moment they leave each other.

Jungwoo stands by the door, the delivery man, and he looks so gentle. He is gentle. If Jaehyun didn't know him as an imp, maybe he'd believe the appearance, but the smile he gives Jaehyun from the hallways is sticky sweet, too sweet to be genuine, and Jaehyun looks at him coldly.

Some days Jaehyun would consider his husband's bodyguard a friend, but usually he's a horrible nuisance.

"Good evening, Your Highness," he says, as though the moon isn't high in the sky.

"Good evening, Jungwoo."

"The Royal Consort, back safe and sound. As promised."

Jaehyun smiles through gritted teeth. "Thank you."

Jungwoo bows to Doyoung, once he's safely inside their room, and Doyoung looks at his friend with a fond shake of his head. The guard wiggles his fingers goodbye in Jaehyun's direction, and then he's gone.

"How was town?" Jaehyun asks Doyoung from their shared bed, novel in hand. The light of the lamp is too weak, but he knows the expression on Doyoung's face without the help. It's always the same; disappointed, unsatisfied. "It seems like you're spending more and more time there, these days."

"Isn't this what we agreed on?" Doyoung asks, snipping, stars already dimming as he inspects Jaehyun where he sits. His displeasure is clear. His face looks so sharp, haughty, everything Jaehyun hates about people with status.

"I'm not saying you can't."

"I know you aren't." Doyoung unwraps the scarf from around his neck and disappears into their shared closet. They've known each other for so long, shared a room, shared a bed in more ways than one, and still he refuses to change where Jaehyun can see him. It's a constant rejection, but it shouldn't rankle Jaehyun the way it does.

Doyoung has the horrible habit of getting under his skin, but the rejection is on both sides, a constant third in their marriage of two, so Jaehyun can't begrudge him for it.

His husband returns in nothing but a t-shirt and shorts, and Jaehyun does the same thing he always tells himself not to do. His eyes look for marks, scratches, hints of time spent elsewhere, and he knows he will find them. Some days they're soft, like a hint of cologne, and other days they're punches to the gut. Today he can keep count: swollen lips, flushed cheeks. The bruise on Doyoung's neck taunts him. Or perhaps, more than the bruise, it's Doyoung, the one who chose a shirt that hides nothing.

This man's insufferable pride.

It truly should not rankle. It should barely linger in Jaehyun's mind.

"That isn't particularly discreet," Jaehyun says, returning his eyes to the book in his hands as Doyoung slides between the sheets. He smells clean, showered, someone else's shampoo to cover up someone else's hands.

"If the public doesn't see, it doesn't matter," Doyoung says dully.

It's a tangled game.

"Next time you have an escapade, feel free to show it off," Doyoung continues, his tone disinterested. He puts his head to the pillow, turns his back to Jaehyun, pulls the covers up to his chin.

Is that what he's doing, showing off? Jaehyun hates it.

"I don't feel the need," he says. "I'd rather keep my escapades to myself."

"Certainly, you may." It's quiet, and then Doyoung sighs, and it's too happy a sound for it to be connected to Jaehyun. It's too happy, likely at a good memory. "You should go to town more often."

"What I do with my time is not of your concern." God, this man. This infuriating man. Jaehyun wants to pull his own chest open and see how the gears turn, see why this man irritates him so much, pull Doyoung out of spaces he shouldn't be in, like Jaehyun's mind.

"I know it isn't." Doyoung yawns. "I'm just saying."

Jaehyun wishes Doyoung would just keep quiet, for once in his life.

He has all the power in the world, and he can't even catch his own happiness. Insufferable.

* * *

There are few things more heartbreaking than Jaehyun's memory of his wedding night. If he had married for happiness, it should have been the happiest day of his life. As it stands, it's merely a nuisance, adjustment, hassle. He hesitates to call it an inconvenience, but the memory of it burns, bruises, and he shoves it into the back of his mind.

It feels like a failure.

It's heartbreaking because Jaehyun tried. Truly, he did. Throughout the reception, he'd been pleasant, he'd asked questions, he'd tried to learn, to improve their relationship that was somehow already in shambles, only to be met with wall after wall, cruel brick and fortified steel.

And it was a constant attempt, consistent through all of their meetings, because they met at 19 and 20 and now they're here, 20 and 21, and a year of hasty preparation was apparently not enough to soothe a wound Jaehyun never realized he created. Letters went unreturned. Meetings were cold as ice.

By the time they're married, Jaehyun doesn't care anymore. Doyoung is exhausting, understanding him is fruitless. They kiss at the altar and there is nothing, and it's a nail in the coffin.

Jaehyun drinks and Doyoung smiles at everyone that isn't his husband, and when they retire to bed Doyoung sits down on the sheets and methodically takes off his ceremonial garb.

"What are you doing?" Jaehyun asks, watching clothes drop to the floor, ivory gold ivory and then there's skin, its own precious gift. He's not drunk, but he's stupid on the day, of trying over and over, and now there's a man on his bed.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Doyoung demands, standing up. His feet are already bare. He undoes his belt.

Jaehyun can't help himself. He doesn't stop anything. He stands there, takes in the vision. "What."

"We're married," Doyoung says plainly. It's not a tone he's used with Jaehyun before. It's not fond, but it's not cruel, either. Plain. Straight-forward. He says it like it's an answer, and when Jaehyun stops to think about it he finds that it is.

"You hate me," he says.

Doyoung doesn't say anything, just tosses his trousers over the desk chair and looks at Jaehyun, bare.

It's odd, because he's naked, but there's no trace of vulnerability in him. If anything, Jaehyun feels at his mercy, weak. Off-balance.

Later, knowing the kind of person Doyoung is, Jaehyun wonders if that was a lie, and if Doyoung was shaking somewhere that Jaehyun could never hope to see. If that moment is the most vulnerable Doyoung has ever been, and ever will be.

Jaehyun hates himself enough to undo the buttons of his shirt, to bare himself and take what's being offered. Doyoung pulls him in and they fall together on the bed.

There are new tones to Doyoung's voice, sweeter tones, darker ones, and it's easy to hurt each other this way, when it's camouflaged as passion. Nails scratch skin. Fingers tug at hair and limbs and sheets and something more fragile, something deeper that will hurt in the morning, when it's broken.

Doyoung presses their mouths together, and it's the only time they kiss, save their vows.

Maybe this, also, is a vow.

"Never again," Doyoung says in the morning, and Jaehyun, hurting deeply, agrees.

* * *

Jaehyun has spent his entire life preparing for the moment when he ascends the throne. His friends were all rich and powerful to some degree, and they would all have different expectations on their shoulders. Still, they would go out and enjoy the world freely, because they had the money to do so without consequence. Yugyeom wrecked his first car and got another one within the week. Miyeon threw a party, was nearly arrested, ruined the house, paid to have it cleaned in the morning, and survived with little more than a tabloid.

There are other fun stories, if Jaehyun were to add them all up, but they'll never be more than stories. Jaehyun never attends. For all his wealth, there's weight, and the days he spends weightless are vastly outnumbered.

He has too many things to study and perfect and master, too many futures to secure, and he lives with a few bowling nights and a weekend of heavy drinking once a month. He's not in school any longer. He wishes he were, to some extent, but there's much of that life that he wished away and will never get back.

Now, he has treaties and contracts and paperwork, on top of the tabloids.

The papers call him an angel. One of the only members of the royal family to last so long without a scandal. Jaehyun's cousin, Taeyong, made it almost this far, until he went on a trip to Vegas and got married after five hours.

They're still together. Jaehyun laughs when people count the days they'll last. His aunt was livid — Taeyong was meant to make an advantageous marriage, not tie the knot with a dancer no one has heard of. Still, they're happier together. Taeyong wouldn't give that up for anything.

"Maybe I should have done that," Jaehyun wonders out loud. It's a beautiful day outside, but the forecast sings of rain, and he knows if he were to open the door, he'd be struck hard with humidity and the promise of foul weather. He'll enjoy the blue skies while they last, even if they're a lie.

"Done what?" Doyoung asks, flipping through his book.

"Gotten married in Vegas."

It's a ruined silence. There are very few times when the two of them agree to be in each other's presence peacefully, and Jaehyun has destroyed something fragile with the truth, but it doesn't seem to bother Doyoung more than usual.

"Maybe you should have."

* * *

"Husband."

They've been married a week, and Jaehyun decides that if this is what the rest of his life is like, he'll die early.

Doyoung is charismatic mess, magnetic, and as soon as you're pulled close he rips you to shreds. He's haughty, assumes his status, and looks down his nose at Jaehyun, of all people. Sure, he is kind to his guard, a boy who looks far too young to protect someone worth so much, and he offered a tense smile to the maid, but he is cruel in other ways.

He refuses to dine with Jaehyun, only attends when it's the queen who calls, and spends most of his time by himself in the library. He smiles at the civilians during the processional after the wedding, and even links their arms for the public, but the moment they're alone it's like Jaehyun is garbage, something vile, not to be touched.

Jaehyun has never felt that way before.

"What is your problem?" Jaehyun asked, the first time, ready for a confrontation.

Doyoung didn't take the bait, not the first time. "I have many," he replied, casually, and Jaehyun learns early that Doyoung delights in tripping up powerful men. "The first of which is that I'm hungry, and the second of which is that I'd rather not be here."

And now, Doyoung calls him _husband_ and nothing else.

Jaehyun is shaving in the bathroom, preparing himself for a day of meetings, and Doyoung has been up for hours despite not having a schedule. His role in court has yet to be decided, as his power lies in Jaehyun's hands, and Jaehyun has no power until his mother steps down. "Yes?" he says, tired. He's so tired, like his husband zaps his energy.

Doyoung looks like he always does. Jaehyun sees him in the mirror and the mirror only, refusing to turn his head, and his husband leans against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest. "I want to talk about our situation."

"Our situation?" Jaehyun sets down the razor and grabs his towel. "We're married. Is that up for discussion?"

"Don't be obtuse," Doyoung says, flat. "You know this is more complicated than matrimony."

Jaehyun sighs. "I wish it weren't."

Something peculiar crosses over Doyoung's face. "You're a romantic?"

"No," Jaehyun says, but the truth is that he's unsure. He's never had the chance to be. Forever, he's known this would be a part of his life, a partner that he didn't choose, would never choose, and still he thought maybe he'd make it work. Thought he'd be happy.

Is that romanticism?

In the mirror, Jaehyun's expression is perilously close to vulnerable, and he hides it with the towel one more time, wiping away shaving cream and sadness and facing his husband. The set of his shoulders is so heavy, Atlas. What a puny world. "What do you need to discuss?"

"We will never be happy together," Doyoung says. He has the presence of mind to hesitate. In the seconds it takes him to inspect Jaehyun's expression and finds his statement true, Jaehyun has already braced himself for assault. "That's clear."

Jaehyun's heart beats rapidly in his chest. "You haven't tried." He tries so hard for it not to be an accusation, but it's biting when it passes his teeth. Doyoung doesn't seem to mind.

"I don't see the point."

For a moment, Jaehyun looks at this man in awe. "Aren't you supposed to be a diplomat?" People like Doyoung shouldn't exist in this space.

Doyoung sighs. "When it's called for."

Politicians love circles — it's their favorite way to talk — but it seems like Doyoung is doing them both a favor by being straight to the point, shoving a knife through the heart of the matter.

Doyoung does not want to try, and Jaehyun can inspire devotion in thousands of people but not in his husband.

Jaehyun was a romantic, he decides, a year later when he and his husband are still at odds, strangers to each other, but he was holding onto a hope without a contingency plan. Meanwhile, Doyoung puts more thought into being miserable than he does in his own happiness.

His contingency plan is simple; they find peace, but not in each other.

"Many people have this kind of relationship," Doyoung says, after explaining it over coffee. His feet are bare but his jaw is set, like this is a business deal. "Don't you think you'll be bitter, having me only, when neither of us want each other?"

Later, Jaehyun sees this moment as a missed opportunity.

But he's a politician at heart, and doesn't have the strength Doyoung does.

"I'm open to it," he says.

An open relationship.

It's not the kind of future Jaehyun had ever considered, but if it eases the tension between them, perhaps it's worth a shot.

* * *

There are few comforts in Jaehyun's life that money cannot buy. Friendships are fleeting, or convenient and little more, and any hobbies he picks up are held to a higher standard. Master it, someone tells him when he's young, that voice in the back of his mind, and when he's older it's his own voice. Be the best. Win what is yours.

Considering that he is given whatever he wants, Jaehyun is surprisingly obsessed with earning his titles.

Husband, Doyoung calls him.

Jaehyun knows the name of Doyoung's lover, and wonders what title Doyoung has given him.

* * *

Jaehyun meets Doyoung's brother early on, and again later, once he's realized Doyoung is predisposed to be miserable.

It's an odd realization, because the first time they meet it's chilly, and the second time it's just horrible. Gongmyung is there when Jaehyun is introduced to Doyoung for the first time, and it's an awful affair for everyone, so perhaps Doyoung's relationship with his brother was overshadowed by the crumbling of Jaehyun's hopes.

Gongmyung isn't at the wedding.

Other members of Doyoung's family attend. His mother and father, although they don't interact much with the court and leave shortly after the ceremony is over. Doyoung's younger sister Yerim stays for the reception and is a bit moody but very kind, and loving even if Doyoung refuses the attention.

Doyoung's other sister and his brother are both absent. At the time, it doesn't seem odd, because important people are busy, and this marriage was arranged rather quickly for a political event.

That's what it is. That's how it is treated. It's a large party, an important day, but they aren't celebrating their brother's happiness. Just a compromise, and a bond. Some well-wishes soothe the burn of their absence, as far as Jaehyun is concerned.

It's not until Jaehyun meets Gongmyung again that the reality sets in — Doyoung and Gongmyung do not get along.

"Take care of him," Gongmyung says, at the end of their first meeting, when Jaehyun still thought he could.

Five months later, Jaehyun's mother meets with another future king to discuss the treaty, what Jaehyun's union with Gongmyung's brother means for their countries. Jaehyun attends the meeting, as does Doyoung, and things begin to unravel early on.

Jaehyun can feel it, a sixth sense, because Doyoung stands at his side and says nothing. Not a single word, and the storm brewing around him stinks of lightning and thunder.

Doyoung's eyes bore into his brother's head for the hours it takes to discuss things, and then he turns on his heels as soon as the matter is settled. The door is grand, his exit even more so, and the flustered butlers hurry to push them open lest Doyoung's pride force them apart like a battering ram.

A storm. Truly, some kind of inhuman force, Kim Doyoung.

"Is he happy?" Gongmyung asks, outside of the courtroom, and Jaehyun is confused, because it's clear that this man cares. Does Doyoung make one-sided grudges a habit? Is it part of his life to push and never pull?

"I wouldn't know," Jaehyun answers. "But with me, I don't think so."

It's not the answer either of them want, but it's what was expected. Gongmyung shakes his hand and leaves with his security. "I look forward to our partnership in the future."

No other words about their link, their common ground, but maybe neither of them want to linger on the fact that they care about someone who refuses to be cared for.

* * *

"You watch him an awful lot."

Jaehyun looks up at Mark and frowns. "Who?"

Sooyoung snickers into her shoulder and refuses to look up from her laptop. Her fingers don't stop typing, not for a moment, but she looks at Mark over the lip of her computer and raises both eyebrows, like Jaehyun can't see her.

Mark is guileless. It's one of Jaehyun's favorite things about him — or, favorite things about the people around him in general, because hidden motives have exhausted him — but it means that his face is too open, his heart is too open. "Doyoung," Mark says, because he doesn't know that he should keep his thoughts to himself.

And god, he says it so loud.

Sooyoung doesn't bother hiding her laugh this time.

"_What?_" Mark whines, too childish. It's why he's still an intern.

But her laugh bounces off the shelves of the library, and a section or two away Doyoung is watching the three of them with tired eyes. He's a striking figure, broad, judging like a gavel, and Jaehyun prays that he didn't hear. It doesn't matter, really, whether he heard or not, because it's clear they're discussing him.

Doyoung picks another book off the shelf and disappears deeper into the library.

Jaehyun watches him go with a scowl.

"Are you going to deny it?" Sooyoung asks impishly. She's one of Jaehyun's favorite interns, if only because she's beautiful and clever enough to know when to use it and that impresses Jaehyun to no end.

"Yes." Jaehyun looks back at the records spread out in front of them and says nothing else.

"'Let's go to the library,' he says." Sooyoung grins. "'There's more space there,' he says."

"Dude," Mark warns, in what he probably imagines is a whisper. "Stop, he's getting really red."

Jaehyun grinds his teeth. "I don't watch him. He's just there."

"I get it," Mark admits, maybe in solidarity, but there isn't anything to _get_. Jaehyun has been married for six months and there's nothing that bothers him more than his husband — nothing. It's natural that Jaehyun pays him attention, when Doyoung goes out of his way to be bothersome. "He's handsome."

The cogs in Jaehyun's brain grinds to a stop. "Excuse me?"

Sooyoung grins, the red line of her mouth absolutely wicked. "Elaborate, please."

Mark buries his face in his book. "No."

She snatches it out of his hands, and Mark sits back in his chair with a grimace.

"He's handsome, okay? He is!" It's defensively, and Mark is bright red as he says it.

Mark is guileless, and his heart is too open, and maybe Jaehyun envies him for that, a little.

"Too bad he's rotten," Jaehyun says.

"Are you going to deny that he's handsome?" Sooyoung asks.

And Jaehyun's heart is weak — "No."

It's the first thing he noticed, all those months ago, over a year now, when he first saw Doyoung, when he admired him so much from afar, pictured their future together and saw something lovely. He's handsome. He's truly handsome, and bothersome, and rotten. Jaehyun swallows thickly.

"He's always nice to me," Mark says, under his breath, still red. His words ring of some school boy crush, and Jaehyun can't blame him for it, although his head tells him he wants to. "I lost an entire years worth of files and he saved them for me."

Sooyoung looks at Mark carefully. "Your bias is showing."

"Hey!" Mark sits up straight in his chair. "I'm loyal!"

"That's right," Jaehyun teases. "Who is your king?"

"You are!" Mark says, too loud. Truly, the boy isn't meant for libraries. "Or, you will be."

He will be.

Jaehyun holds on to that. These days, it feels more and more like that's all he has.

* * *

Doyoung was raised for the throne. He is not just some noble's son, groomed for an advantageous marriage, but someone with the mind and heart and bearing of a king. Inherently, Jaehyun supposes, that put them at odds — Doyoung was raised as a king, and Jaehyun will be king. A crucial, horrifying difference.

Honestly, Jaehyun has never asked about his husband's life before they married. He tried to, early on, before Doyoung was ready to tell him, and now he thinks there's too much between them for Jaehyun to actually get an answer.

When Kim Doyoung had first entered his atmosphere, after his mother had told him his fate was sealed and before he'd realized what that meant, Jaehyun had excitedly taken to his computer, typed in the name and scrolled through the articles that popped up.

_Prince Overtakes School Record in Archery_

_Youngest Son of King Kim Wins Fencing Competition_

_Teen Prince Negotiates Peace on Border_

It seems that Doyoung respects his privacy the same way Jaehyun does. There are no scandals or affairs. His image is plastered all over the internet, but it's the same sort of picture: Doyoung walking down the street, sitting at diners, standing at social events.

He's handsome. Jaehyun remembers thinking this his future husband is handsome. There's a softness to his features, a strength when he frowns and a beauty when he smiles. Jaehyun remembers being excited to meet him.

_Prince Doyoung: Challenges Brother for Throne._

That headline, Jaehyun barely thought about it that night. It was one of many, just another sentence to add to the growing portfolio Jaehyun was creating in his mind. Maybe, if he thought about it harder and saw what it said so plainly, he would have saved himself years of an unhappy marriage.

Maybe, maybe.

He doesn't think about it.

Naïve.

* * *

Jaehyun notices Doyoung's excursions eventually, but it takes him so long. He would consider himself a perceptive person, but truthfully he's stopped trying to figure Doyoung out. If his husband doesn't want to be seen as anything other than an aggressive, stubborn mule, then Jaehyun can give him what he wants, for once.

Still, it takes him a horribly long time.

It's only sort of Jaehyun's fault, though, his not noticing. As husbands, the time they spend together is limited to however many hours of sleep they get a night, and how much that sleep overlaps. Doyoung usually comes in later and changes for bed and says two words — if Jaehyun is worthy — before turning off the light and disappearing into the darkness.

During the day, they spend as little time together as possible.

There are meetings and press conferences and other farce, where Doyoung plasters on a fond smile for the cameras. It's the most he can give, when it comes to Jaehyun, but honestly Jaehyun is impressed no bitterness leaks through, since Doyoung is brimming with it.

"These events are exhausting," Doyoung says, taking his gloves off once they are seated in the car. Jungwoo is in the passenger's seat, sending emails, and Jaehyun's driver Dejun keeps his mouth shut. He's had plenty of practice, overhearing countless spats. "Unnecessary."

"The people want to see their future king," Jaehyun says, keeping his eyes locked on the window. Trees pass by, small clusters of girls pointing at them as they drive by. If he were in a better mood maybe he'd wave to them. He's barely done that, since the wedding.

Doyoung is silent. It should strike fear in Jaehyun's heart, in truth, because Doyoung is only quiet when he has something to say.

"Do we have any more schedules today?" is what he says eventually, not to Jaehyun but to his guard.

The smile Jungwoo gives should be its own warning. "Only your own, if you have any."

"I think I'd like to go to town."

It's not the first time Doyoung has spent his evening outside the castle walls. Jaehyun doesn't care, considering Doyoung is less of a hassle when he's out of sight. "You'll bring Jungwoo with you?"

Doyoung sighs. "Yes."

And this conversation, too, would pass Jaehyun by, if Jungwoo didn't make it his mission to be a bother. "I've always loved a good ménage à trois."

"Jungwoo," Doyoung snips.

It's only when Jaehyun sees the furious blush on Doyoung's cheeks that he realizes his head had snapped from the passing cars to his husband. The sinking realization that he's frowning. He scolds himself into something stoic. "You're meeting someone?"

"No one important," Doyoung replies, long fingers smoothing out the wrinkles in his trousers. His hands are almost delicate. His face, too, finely structured, but his mouth is so stubborn he's chomping at the bit. He stares out of his own window before finding his sharp tongue and looking at Jaehyun, a challenge. "Is that an issue?"

It isn't.

"You couldn't meet them in the castle?" Jaehyun asks. "Wouldn't that be more discreet?"

Doyoung laughs, more air than sound. "I don't like dirtying my bed."

This new awareness sits heavy in Jaehyun's stomach, but it's overshadowed by the urge to bite back. "I don't like pre-planning my affairs."

"Yes, I know." Doyoung returns to watching the world pass them by. "A man of passion, Jung Jaehyun."

Jaehyun spent years studying books and mastering techniques and learning politics for the day he would become king, but at this moment, the most precious thing would be to understand this man. The royal consort. No one prepared him for Doyoung.

He isn't sure if anything ever could have prepared him.

"Don't let the paparazzi catch you," Jaehyun says mildly.

"They haven't yet."

It's a quiet drive, once the beating in Jaehyun's ears has settled.

* * *

His name is Johnny.

The man that Doyoung goes to see on his own, the one that leaves marks behind, the one that Jaehyun is — absurdly — jealous of. His name is Johnny, and he isn't nobility, but his family owns one of the largest car manufacturing companies on the continent, and he's powerful. Wealthy, handsome, kind.

This year's Most Eligible Bachelor, according to the articles that Jaehyun can't stop himself from reading.

He looks unreal, Jaehyun thinks, when he sees the man's picture in the magazine. Jaehyun traces the lines of this stranger's face and wonders many things, but truly, he must be kind. And patient, too, if he can handle Doyoung.

Or maybe Doyoung is kind in return. Maybe Doyoung is only harsh with Jaehyun, and is sweet underneath his barbs. Jaehyun doubts he will ever learn.

"Do you love him?" Jaehyun asks, a little drunk, blue, out of nowhere.

Doyoung isn't expecting it. The shock washes over his face, and it's the only time Jaehyun has ever seen him slip in public. The cameras flash. He wonders what kind of articles they'll post about the two of them in the morning.

Jaehyun sees the clench of Doyoung's jaw and knows that he's overstepped, but he doesn't care. Doyoung plucks the glass of wine out of Jaehyun's hands, half-empty — the both of them. "Don't ask unnecessary questions."

They travel home together in the same car, as always, and Doyoung hops out of one vehicle and into another as soon as they reach the castle. Jungwoo's smile glints too white as he opens the door and allows the Royal Consort inside.

Something about it strikes Jaehyun as brutal, but he's drunk and his heart can't be trusted.

Johnny.

Jaehyun desperately hopes that Doyoung is unhappy and hates himself for it.

* * *

His wedding day is as grand an affair as befits his station, meaning it's too much for his tastes. But in this lifetime, Jaehyun will be king, and Doyoung will be his royal consort. That's worth something to the thousands of people in the church, and it's worth something to Jaehyun.

It's worth less to others. The paparazzi, for example, care very little about today beyond the headline tomorrow. They speak of the beauty, of the drama, of the harsh looks between the nobility, and who wore what. They'll criticize the thread-count on the napkins and the artistry of the ice sculpture. Jaehyun doesn't care, as long as they don't criticize the wine, seeing as he chose that himself.

Doyoung walks into the sanctuary, dressed in white and gold, and when he makes eye contact with Jaehyun at the altar, his face is honed into that perfect blankness, and Jaehyun swallows down the bitterness in his throat. They are in agreement. This will not be their first scandal. They've worked too hard for this.

For an hour or two, they can pretend to like each other.

This is the first time they've ever agreed. That is worth more note than this entire wedding, if Jaehyun is being honest with himself.

But that is not his first thought. He sees Doyoung walking down the aisle and does not think of the paparazzi, or his station.

He sees something beautiful, and he hates himself for it.

* * *

Jaehyun won't say that Doyoung has no redeeming qualities. As a partner, he has very few, but as an advisor Doyoung is invaluable. The way he makes Jaehyun feel like an ant has an even greater effect on lesser men, and his mind runs circles, day and night.

Doyoung is at his most fearsome when he's quiet.

Maybe it's because he never stops thinking, always moving, and so staying silent means that something is building. It's a dangerous trait, and there are times when Jaehyun watches Doyoung hold his tongue for the length of a meeting only to rip arguments to shreds with smooth words before the hour is over.

There are days when Jaehyun is happy, even, to have Doyoung by his side, when it comes to the courtroom.

But that's a cold energy, sophisticated. Powerful.

This is different.

This is Doyoung's hands holding onto his fork and knife too tightly, pushing his food around, pretending to eat. Or forgetting. His mind is far away — always thinking, but focused somewhere beyond what either of them can see.

The people around them chatter, friendly, or the appearance of friendliness. It's not like Doyoung to forget his face in the company of powerful people, but Jaehyun isn't sure if it's his place to hell him it's dropped.

But if not Jaehyun's place, then whose?

Jaehyun leans in close, like a lover, and whispers. "What are you thinking about?"

Doyoung's eyelashes flutter, and he smiles carefully. Jaehyun's voice is a reminder to pull his mask back on, a Pavlovian response. "Nothing," he says, mouth pursed but expression pleasant. A little flushed, and Jaehyun pulls away into his own atmosphere.

"Anything pressing?"

"Not really." Doyoung delicately cuts his steak. "Nothing appropriate for present company." _Nothing I want to tell you._

"Give me a hint," Jaehyun says, because a part of his heart is cruel and wants to hope. "Help us understand each other."

If they were in the safety of their home, Jaehyun truly thinks Doyoung would tell him to fuck off. As it is, Doyoung seems unprepared for the question. He lowers his eyes. Frowns.

"Just thinking about how easy life would be, if we were different people."

Jaehyun thinks about that for hours afterwards, when the lights are off and he has nothing left to do but run his own circles. In the moment he hums. "I think it would be."

And then Doyoung smiles, wry, and it's far more familiar than this introspection. "Too bad."

They don't speak for the rest of the dinner.

* * *

"I want to be clear with you," Doyoung says one day. It's one of the few days they share a bed at night. Jaehyun spends sleepless hours in his office and Doyoung spends still longer with Johnny, far beyond where Jaehyun can reach. "Even though I don't think it's your business."

"If it's not my business then don't tell me," Jaehyun grouses, turning over and turning off the lamplight. It's been a long day. They're beginning construction on a new road in town and chain restaurants are already pandering for spots on the highway. If Jaehyun has to deal with another proposal he'll scream, even if it's from his husband.

Doyoung reaches over and turns the light back on. "Listen to me."

Jaehyun wants to bury his head in the pillow. "No."

There's a swat against his shoulder, and it seems unusually familiar, but Doyoung doesn't give it a second thought. "Johnny asked me if I wanted a room in his apartment, and I said yes."

"I can't hear you." Jaehyun can hear him, and Doyoung knows it, and the both of them are fools. "Tell me in the morning."

"I won't." Doyoung huffs, laying back down. "I just wanted you to know."

Jaehyun doesn't sleep well, but he never does when Doyoung is there.

* * *

"It's strange," Jaehyun tells Sicheng, sitting with him at his dining room table. "I used to fall in love with every beautiful person."

This beautiful man, who has very little and gives what he has, and whom — incredibly — Jaehyun does not want.

Truly, he's ruined.

Sicheng pours them both tea, somewhere between unaware and all-knowing, and he looks at Jaehyun as he sits down at the table. The chairs creak. The table is old and scratched but it works. Broken but functional. "Strange?" He picks up his cup with careful hands. "I'd call that fickle."

Jaehyun laughs. "Or naïve."

"Maybe." Sicheng huffs, running a hand through his hair, and when Jaehyun looks at him he can appreciate him for what he is: a beautiful man, present. But more than that, he's unimpressed. "Maybe thinking it's love is naïve, if you fall out of it so easy."

Maybe it is. Jaehyun stirs sugar into his tea, bitter. "I don't think I can do that anymore, anyway," he admits.

Here, in this dingy room, surrounded by laundry and creaky tables and a beautiful man that Jaehyun should want — could have — but doesn't, he's the most human he's ever been.

"What changed?" Sicheng asks.

Jaehyun lies. "I'm not sure."

_Don't come back unless you're sure of something, for once._

Perhaps this is as close as he can get.

* * *

Doyoung plays a long game, finds someone that matters and holds on, but Jaehyun can't bring himself to do that. He can barely find it within himself to stay in control, and the trouble with being consistent as a ruler — a boss, a glorified administrator — is that he craves rebellion elsewhere.

He sleeps around. Not often, but whenever he sees someone he wants that wants him back. As the days go on it happens less and less, and Jaehyun thinks it's because he's dissatisfied in every way. Barren.

His heart is barren. He hates it.

He pours himself into his people. They love him, affirm him, and that matters, but he finds a peace in others that he doesn't find in himself, or behind closed doors. He sleeps with one of the chefs and then gets up early in the morning to walk the markets. Helps old women prepare their stalls for vending. Donates to the local elementary school and prepares to make an appearance when they open the new gymnasium. Doyoung attends with him, all smiles.

Jaehyun kisses one of the teachers and his lawyer has the man sign a nondisclosure agreement before they leave.

"This is getting ridiculous," Joohyun tells him with a shake of her head as she files the paperwork. "In the safety of the castle is one thing, but at an elementary school? Truly?"

"We weren't at the elementary school at the time," Jaehyun argues, but it's weak. It's strange, that he tries to find comfort in people but feels so ruined afterwards, like an apple rotten to the core.

Doyoung probably doesn't feel guilt when he's in Johnny's bed.

Joohyun frowns at the floorboards, and shakes her head one more time. She hits Jaehyun gently with the file before putting it in the cabinet and locking it shut. "Be careful with yourself, Jaehyun. You're soft on the inside. All the legislation in the world can't change that."

"I'm not so soft anymore," Jaehyun reminds, smiling. "I'm a lot older than I was when we met." A man. Not the child Joohyun remembers.

She lifts his face up by the chin. A small woman, but huge and full of something Jaehyun thinks is more valuable than anything. "You've convinced yourself that you're naturally this way, but a king can have feelings. You know that, don't you?"

"Of course." Jaehyun's fingers are gentle around her wrist. He laughs. "I have feelings."

"You have desires," Joohyun corrects. "You're allowed to give them roots."

Dangerous territory, Jaehyun thinks, when the moment he thinks too hard about his desires all the signs point towards something that he will never have and shouldn't want. "I want my people to be happy. I'll work towards that."

"A worthy goal, I guess." With a sigh Joohyun checks the time on her phone and picks up her purse. "I'm leaving now." She looks Jaehyun over another time. "Cover that hickey, please, before Doyoung sees."

"He won't care." But the idea of him seeing makes Jaehyun nauseated, and maybe that's what Joohyun was trying to prevent in the first place.

* * *

Jaehyun meets Johnny Seo three times; once as a teenager, once as man, and once as a competitor.

As a teenager, their meeting wasn't anything particularly memorable. In fact, as a man, Jaehyun struggles to remember the occasion. Jaehyun was always a prince, and always busy, and the son of a tycoon was notable in the moment but also nothing particularly life changing, considering how many he met a year.

"We've met before," Johnny says easily, when Doyoung introduces them in the kitchens.

It would make sense that Johnny remembers. There are plenty of rich teenager and very few princes.

Jaehyun smiles charmingly and doesn't give away the fact that he doesn't remember, but the amused press of Doyoung's lips makes it clear he knows. It's terrible, the way Doyoung can read him so well when Doyoung is still a mystery most days.

They'd met at a charity gala, back when Jaehyun didn't care enough to have his suits tailored and Johnny was too young to know when he was trying too hard. When Jaehyun digs through his memory, that's the impression he finds: that Johnny Seo would be stunning if not for his tacky suit jacket, and that he should stick to being charming because that's what he's good at.

He was too gangly at 15, and his hair was too long, but he was charming. The men and women at the gala loved him. They didn't respect him, might never respect him, but they loved him.

Jaehyun had pitied him then, along with the other boys and girls dressed up and attending because they were trying to play the same games as nobility. They were new money, not bred for old politics.

Now, it seems that Jaehyun's first impression was wrong in most ways. There's nothing pitiable about Johnny Seo.

He towers, taller than Doyoung, taller than Jaehyun, and has an easy nature that you can't find in court. It plays in his favor, because there's a hard look to his eye that implies he can hold his own, and a magnetism that doesn't let you leave his orbit. Handsome, almost surreal, but grounded in friendliness.

A man that should be underestimated and refuses to be so. They'll respect him now, because he knows how to demand it and phrase it like he's asking.

He stands not like a king, but a lover.

It's a mistake that they're meeting. It wasn't intentional, and Jaehyun has never felt the need to meet Doyoung's affair. Johnny Seo could have continued being something incorporeal for as long as he wanted, and Jaehyun would have soldiered on without noticing the absence. Something about seeing him here, though, makes Jaehyun's mentality sound awfully like denial.

Johnny has come to pick up Doyoung, an odd circumstance, considering that the Royal Consort prefers to meet in town at Johnny's place. It seems like they're taking a weekend trip and it's safer to do so with the security of the castle and its staff. Non-descript car, discreet driver, and eyes that are trained to spot cameras.

Jaehyun is fine with it, really, but he would have liked some warning.

The first time they met, Johnny and Jaehyun had been dressed to impress, and now Johnny looks like a normal human and Jaehyun is in his pajamas. The wire rims of Jaehyun's glasses dig into his nose and Johnny looks so perfect he might not be real.

Johnny's arm is around Doyoung's waist. It doesn't bother Jaehyun at all.

He won't say that his eyes don't linger there — can't pretend, because when he realizes it's happening and pulls himself together Doyoung is watching him with sharp eyes. Horrible. But it's none of his business. If Doyoung wants to spend his weekend with Johnny instead of fighting with his husband, well, it's probably easier on the both of them.

"It's nice to meet you again," Jaehyun says, inclining his head, and Johnny bows low. Respectful. It pisses Jaehyun off more than it should, that this is a bizarre situation and Johnny has something that should be Jaehyun's and is still pretending like he knows his place.

Not that Doyoung should be Jaehyun's — that's not the relationship they set themselves up for.

"Release," Doyoung says lowly, when Johnny goes to tell Jungwoo to prepare the car. "Too much more tension and you'll snap."

"I'm not tense," Jaehyun snips. "I just woke up. I'm grumpy."

Doyoung looks Jaehyun up and down. Jaehyun has been up for hours, is tense, and does not like Johnny. They both know it. It doesn't stop Doyoung, would never be enough to stop him, but at least he's open about it being awkward. "I figured you would be in meetings this morning. I didn't realize we would be intruding on you."

"I cancelled the meetings when you said you couldn't attend," Jaehyun grumbles. He pushes his glasses up on his nose. "It was over your addendum; did you expect me to continue without you?"

Yes. That's exactly what Doyoung thinks. "It's not like you need me to keep things moving."

Jaehyun sighs. "I suppose I don't." He looks at Doyoung tiredly. His food is cold and soggy on his plate. "I won't cancel next time, if you'd rather I didn't."

"I didn't say that." Doyoung's fingers touch a small scratch on the table surface. "You just didn't have to."

Jaehyun can feel his heart rate rising. "You can speak plainly with me, you know? We're not in the courtroom. You don't have to talk circles around everything."

Doyoung smiles and it's wry. "Aren't I supposed to be a diplomat?"

"When you have to be," Jaehyun replies. "I'd rather you weren't with me."

Slowly, Doyoung retracts his hand from the table and sticks it in his pocket. He looms over Jaehyun like this, but Jaehyun decides it's too early to make himself seem bigger than he is. "I'm never a diplomat with you."

That's true, as well. Doyoung doesn't hold his tongue with Jaehyun.

"Maybe I just want you to stop thinking so much," Jaehyun muses, because even if Doyoung says things for impact he watches what he says.

"Rich, Mr. Pot."

This entire conversation isn't friendly, but it's the first time Doyoung has criticized him without barbs that are meant to cut. It's just his husband, standing in the kitchen with his hands in his pockets and a light in his eyes.

Is it because Johnny is here? This ease, is it that man's doing? What kind of black magic has he worked?

"I'll be plain with you if you tell me what you really think of Johnny."

So early and yet somehow too late. Still. "He's handsome," Jaehyun says. "I'm jealous of him."

Doyoung blinks.

"It's odd, isn't it?" Jaehyun takes a sip of his orange juice and leans his elbows on the table. Improper. "I keep wondering if you're in love with him, and how that will work, but I think I'd rather you didn't tell me."

"You asked me if I loved him before," Doyoung points out.

"Drunk." Jaehyun laughs. "Now, I'm glad you didn’t answer."

There's a knock on the door. Johnny and Jungwoo are there, ready. Jungwoo has Doyoung's bag across his back, and he looks between Jaehyun and Doyoung with eyes rather sharp. Jaehyun raises an eyebrow, takes a bite of cold toast, and smiles at Johnny. "I hope you all have a pleasant trip."

"Today you look like an open door," Jungwoo says before they leave, while Johnny and Doyoung giggle to each other like children.

"I'm too tired to hold it shut, I think." Jaehyun takes his glasses off and rubs away at his headache. "By the time you get back, I'm sure I'll be back to myself."

Jungwoo is a surprise then — he usually is — and runs a hand through Jaehyun's hair. "It's a sweet look on you," he says, teasing, and Jaehyun's eyes are wide. "I bet Doyoung likes it, too."

Jaehyun snorts. "I don't think Doyoung likes any part of me."

Jungwoo shrugs. "Does he know any part of you?"

Silly question, considering that Doyoung stares straight through him.

"The worst parts," Jaehyun says, and he laughs.

He doesn't watch when their car leaves. There's nothing for him, there.

* * *

It's not Doyoung who makes use of their arrangement first, as far as Jaehyun knows, despite being the one to suggest it.

No, it's Jaehyun, a month into their marriage, drunk on vodka with a visiting dignitary who thinks that seduction is a valid form of political discussion. It isn't, will never be, because Jaehyun is smarter than he is hot blooded, but he won't say that it isn't a good feeling, to be wanted.

He has spent his entire life being desired. Beautiful, powerful, kind, a vision. Something unattainable, someone people want — want to be.

Now, this man, breathing his name into his ear, whining, eyes blown wide and body shaking, this man wants Jaehyun. Jaehyun has taken this man apart and put him back together in such a way that he'll be thinking about this moment for weeks, feeling it for days.

He's proud, he thinks, as he buries himself a little deeper, sweat slick between them.

Later, he regrets everything.

He's never been one for one night stands, but he looks at the scratches on his back and knows that they'll scar deeper than skin.

Doyoung walks in to Jaehyun shirtless in the bathroom. He stares at Jaehyun's chest, at his arms, at the wreck he's been made into, and there's fire in his eyes. Is this the moment, Jaehyun wonders, that he'll know what it's like to be desired by his husband?

Gently, Doyoung reaches past him and grabs his contact case off of the bathroom sink. "Cover that up for the press conference," he says simply. "I don't want them to think I'm indiscreet."

Jaehyun wonders if Doyoung has any marks on his body, wonders how they got there, wonders how they got here.

And, with brutal honesty, Jaehyun isn't sure he likes the image he reflects in the mirror.

* * *

For all that Doyoung insisted on attending the coronation, he desperately does not want to be there.

Jaehyun supposes it can't be helped. In reality, they needed to attend, as they're allies and supporting King Gongmyung is more important than whatever family drama is happening behind the curtain, but it was Doyoung that made a point to make an appearance, and it's Doyoung that is shaking under the weight of it.

He's a very good politician. There's no sign of discomfort when the crown is perched on his brother's head. The only sign that something is wrong is the way his nails dig into Jaehyun's thigh.

Considering they barely touch these days unless it's for a photo, it means a great deal.

"You'll cut holes in my trousers," Jaehyun whispers.

Without turning to his husband, eyes focused forward, Doyoung shows his nails. "They're filed, you're just a baby." But he puts his palm down on his own thigh and doesn't say anything else. He twists his own fingers for a heartbeat and then smooths them out, his final allowance.

Jaehyun kind of wishes he hadn't said anything, but Doyoung seems fine. Is fine, by all accounts, and the articles that pop up the next day will find Doyoung smiling when it matters.

The reception is more difficult, but there are more people watching, and more vices to trip over.

Doyoung very pointedly does not drink.

There is an odd tension to his self-control, wound tight and ready to snap, but the Lords and Ladies that dance by them don't seem to notice. They ask polite questions about their marriage and their plans and tax reforms, and try to wiggle their way into good graces, and they leave thinking they've done so. Jaehyun is excellent at small talk, and Doyoung is a master a playing games.

If the others don't notice anything substantial, perhaps Jaehyun is projecting.

And yet, as the night goes on, the exhaustion sets in. His husband is not an extrovert — he's intelligent, even witty, and it fools people — and with every tick of the clock his steps get more weighted, carrying him away.

Jaehyun observes this in the later hours from afar.

"Shouldn't you be talking to your husband?" his mother asks him, sipping her wine. There's a man who has been trying to talk with her for hours, and she's managed to go the entire conversation without saying anything that matters. Jaehyun can tell she's proud of herself by the curl of her smile. "Old women like me can entertain ourselves. We don't all have handsome men to call on."

"Mother." Jaehyun laughs.

She's laughing too, on the inside. She knows of their arrangement.

But there's something somber in her eyes, still, when she watches Doyoung over the rim of her glass. "Don't you think he looks rather lonely?"

Jaehyun sees Doyoung as he always does, but the Queen is right.

Gongmyung shines. Doyoung sees it too well.

"I'm happy for you," Doyoung says, when he and his brother meet, Jaehyun lingering not far behind. They touch hands. Gongmyung looks at Doyoung in wonder.

"Are you speaking the truth?" the King asks, and Doyoung's mask slips, for a moment, a heartbeat, and then two.

"I'm not sure," he admits. "I'm sure I'm happy for you, somewhere."

Jaehyun isn't sure. He's not sure Doyoung remembers how to be happy.

Whatever emotion his husband is feeling, it's draining. Jaehyun knows as much, because one moment he's working the floor of the ballroom with a smile hiding sneers, and the next he's slunk into the background. The waiters bustle around them, a sea of _Your Highness_ and bowing and platitudes. Doyoung yields to them. It's a sure sign that his boats are sinking.

Jaehyun has never been much of a husband, but he prides himself on helping the people that are his. It's all he has, when the nights are hard.

Is Doyoung his?

Looking at him now, Jaehyun thinks that he is, even if neither of them would say so.

"Fancy a drink?" he asks Doyoung later, once he's gathered his thoughts. He's holding two flutes of champagne.

"No," Doyoung says, smiling. Cameras flash. "Drinking is the last thing I'd like to do." He tilts his head, almost coy, if Jaehyun imagined Doyoung to be capable of that. Maybe he is. Jaehyun has already had his champagne — it's perhaps the only reason he's offering any to his husband, but it softens the edges of his thinking, and so Doyoung, too, is softer. Less abrasive. More vulnerable, but that doesn't stand. "Talking to you might be a close second."

There's too much push and pull between them, Jaehyun thinks, for things to ever be easy.

"That Lord in the corner has been giving you eyes all night," Doyoung says mildly, and it's true. Lord Jeon has been getting more drunk by the hour, and more shameless with his staring. "Perhaps that's a way you can entertain yourself, since I imagine you're bored if you're talking to me."

The idea boils in Jaehyun's stomach. "I'd rather not."

"Maybe I will, then," Doyoung muses, and his smile turns sweet. Jaehyun doesn't need to turn his head to see where he's looking, nor to imagine the blush on the near-stranger's face. Doyoung can be charming.

He would never do something so spontaneous. That's Jaehyun's calling.

"Why do you always do that?" Jaehyun asks. This is also an effect of his night of wining, mouth sweet and brain fuzzy. He is a brave person, but he's always considered Doyoung a battle he could never win, and he was raised to know how to choose his fights. Today, he deems the victory less important than the fighting.

Doyoung is surprised. Jaehyun can tell, because his smile grows almost painfully wide. "Do what?"

Jaehyun takes the time to inspect his husband's face. He rarely gets the chance, when Doyoung spends his time with his lover or anywhere other than with Jaehyun. The court rooms are cold, and Doyoung thrives as a ruler, but Jaehyun isn't sure where Doyoung thrives as a man.

He's never seen it. It's not for him.

He breathes. "Why do you always push me away when we both know you don't want to be alone?"

Doyoung inspects Jaehyun in turn. It's a slow, searching kind of look, the implication something Jaehyun can't pin down. Elevators. Calculating. And then he smiles, smaller, and it's genuine because it's wry. "Because it works." He takes the flute of champagne with delicate fingers.

Jaehyun can't argue it. He smiles at a woman who offers them hors d'oeuvres on a platter and picks up a strawberry so his hands have something to do. Doyoung's eyes slip over her head.

"Tonight we can be a happy couple," Jaehyun tells the walls.

Doyoung looks at him, takes a sip of the champagne. "Can we?"

"Just for tonight." Jaehyun leans into him, taking precious space. "You can push me away in the morning."

"I don't need to be a happy couple," Doyoung reminds him.

"Not even for an evening?" Jaehyun smiles. "You wanted to attend the coronation. The papers are going to write about the brother who challenged him for a month afterwards." Bitter truth. "Don't let them see you crack."

"I would _never_," Doyoung grouses, despite knowing that he already has. But he takes another drink and he looks more himself than he has all night. He swirls his drink for a moment, and another, and then he looks at Jaehyun through the corner of his eye and raises it in a toast. "To the happy couple."

Jaehyun thinks the sounds of clinking glasses warms him more than anything. More, even, then the heat of Doyoung's hand around his waist, because one is a farce and the other is a bitter step forward.

* * *

The split on Doyoung's lip looks particularly ugly. It's dark outside, but the lights on the road illuminate the broken skin with a horrible rhythm. Jaehyun would stare at it if he weren't determined to not give Doyoung the satisfaction.

Or maybe it's guilt.

Whatever it is, it's impenetrable, a wall that Jaehyun could never hope to breech. It lays over them both, thick, muting everything. A grand, overbearing silence boiling under the roar of wheels on asphalt.

But Doyoung has always been stronger than Jaehyun, in the ways that matter. "Didn't you ever wonder why they married you to me?"

When he looks, finally, that split lip is still as ugly as when it appeared under Jaehyun's fist, but Doyoung is staring resolutely forward, eyes dead and empty. The bruise blooming on Jaehyun's jaw aches, a thunderous pulse.

"For the trade agreement," Jaehyun answers. Tired. It's in his voice, in his face. Doyoung is a statue and Jaehyun is a walking corpse.

"But why _me?_" Doyoung demands, and Jaehyun wonders how many times Doyoung has asked himself that. "I have sisters."

"I'm gay."

And here, Doyoung spits a horrid truth. "You think they care?"

They don't. His mother made a dream come true when she presented him with a husband instead of a wife, but they both know that had a wife been more favorable that's who he would have married. A pretty wife, and then Jaehyun's nephew wouldn't be a future heir, and Jaehyun's life would be simple. It's hard to say whether he'd be more miserable or not. The scales are too balanced.

"You know they don't care," Doyoung says, and oddly it's free of vitriol. It's plain. "You really think that they would marry off someone in direct line for the throne? You never wondered?"

No. Jaehyun's greatest curse is that he never did.

Doyoung doesn't tell him the answers. He turns back into stone, knuckles split open, heart locked up, and finally Jaehyun wonders.

* * *

"I think I'm sick."

"Love sick?" Joohyun asks, bored.

Mark coughs awkwardly in his chair. He's holding his resumé in sweaty hands as Joohyun pours over his file. She'd kindly offered the interns to look over their portfolios before their season was over, so that they had an excellent chance of getting work elsewhere, but Jaehyun hadn't necessarily seen the connection between that and her office door being closed.

The intern stands up from his seat as soon as his brain registers that the Prince has arrived, bows to him hastily despite the fact that they've developed a casual relationship. "Your Majesty." Mark gets no work done when he's panicking, and he panics any time anyone remotely important walks in, and Jaehyun would rather strip that away than not have Mark's abilities at their disposal. He's young, Jaehyun thinks, as Mark's ears turn pink. He'll learn.

Joohyun is far past learning and doesn't even look up at him, focusing more at pouring through Mark's paperwork and recommendations. Her hair is tied up high on her head and her eyes are critical when she looks up at Jaehyun finally.

"I'm not love sick," Jaehyun denies, collapsing into the chair beside Mark's. The younger boy is still standing. Jaehyun pats the cushion on the free chair with his hand impatiently. Mark's nervous energy is too much to add on top of his own. "I've got, like, gas, or something."

The noise Mark makes is inhuman, but he sits down anyway.

Joohyun is less than impressed. "Mark was just telling me about his crush," she says eventually, an abrupt change in subject that is either meant to torture the intern, confused Jaehyun, or both.

"I don't have a crush!" Mark denies, but his face is red. "I just respect him a lot!"

"Who is that?" Jaehyun asks.

"Nobody," Mark mumbles.

"Your husband," Joohyun answers for him, and Jaehyun's eyebrows rise into his hairline.

"_Doyoung?_"

"What?" Joohyun asks. "You don't think Doyoung is the kind of person that impressionable young men might be attracted to?"

"I'm not attracted to him!" Mark's voice is several pitches higher than normal, and his hands are moving so quickly Jaehyun has a hard time keeping track of them. "I'm sorry! I'm not after the Royal Consort." Like that was Jaehyun's concern.

"It'd be fine if you were."

"_Joohyun!_" Jaehyun might really kill her.

"It's an open secret, Jaehyunnie," the advisor tells him, and if he didn't know her better he'd think she was too emotionally detached to care about his feelings. In reality, this conversation is purely for her enjoyment. "Openness is something we value here."

Mark looks weak. "Please stop."

"Tell me about your crush," Joohyun says, and truly she's wicked. "I'm sure Jaehyun would love to hear someone wax poetic about his husband. He likes that kind of ego boost."

"I do not."

"I don't have a crush on His Highness," Mark says firmly.

Joohyun is playing games, and she came to win. Mark is just a victim. "You talked for twenty minutes about how he organized for your family to visit you for the end of your program."

Jaehyun is surprised. "I didn't know that." He frowns. "Were they not coming?" The interns have an informal graduation, but considering the type of program this is, completing it successfully is a big deal.

"They..." Mark can't find the words, and there's something shameful in the set of his shoulders. "Prince Doyoung made arrangement so that they could. They wouldn't have otherwise."

"That's nice of him." Jaehyun's mind is far away.

"He's..." Mark swallows. "I don't have a crush."

Jaehyun laughs. "I didn't say you did."

"I know that things are...tense between the two of you, but he's always been very kind to me, and the other interns." Mark swallows, and he puts his resumé down on Joohyun's desk so that he doesn't crumple it any further. "Not like a boss, but like a big brother."

"It's cute, right?" Joohyun asks, prim. She curls her mouth like a cat. "Now, tell me about your...gas."

"Shut the fuck up," Jaehyun snips, and Mark's scandalized gasp is worth how ineffective it is. Joohyun's face lights up, done with games, and she laughs. "My chest hurts a lot and I get sweaty hands and sometimes my stomach feels like it's going to explode." And thinking about Johnny fills Jaehyun with a quiet, wild kind of rage that he knows better than to voice aloud. Seeing Doyoung leave so often burns in the worst way. Time ruins him, his façade of indifference.

"Men," she says, leaning back in her chair. "You always say women are so complicated."

"I've never said that."

"I have," Mark says, blankly, like he's seen the face of God and fears her.

Joohyun looks at the younger man so fondly. Jaehyun wonders if Mark knows exactly how much he's endeared himself here, or that Joohyun would likely fight for him in any position he wanted in a year or two. But when she looks back at Jaehyun, it's less fond and more critical. "You're allowed to be jealous. I don't know how many times I need to tell you that."

Jaehyun frowns. "I've never been jealous about it before."

"It wasn't real before."

"I'm not sure it's real now."

"That's a lie." Joohyun snorts. "Doyoung spends more time at Johnny's apartment than he does with you, and that disparity has been growing for the past...how long?"

"Four months?" Mark offers.

Jaehyun wonders how much of the local gossip wheel revolves around his marriage.

"I find it difficult to miss him when all he did was make my life harder," Jaehyun says, pulling Mark's resumé closer and stealing a pen from Joohyun's cup. He ignores Mark's gentle protests. In reality, he just wants something to focus on other than this conversation.

"Just yesterday you were telling me you wished he had been at dinner with us," Joohyun points out.

That's true. "Those women needed someone to rip them to shreds," Jaehyun explains. "I'm too polite."

"That's a lie," Joohyun says. "You just know Doyoung is better at it than you."

After being on the other end of it so many times, Jaehyun knows Doyoung's harsh tongue better than anyone.

"I never understood why he was so cruel to you," Mark mentions out loud, almost distantly. "When he talks to us, he seems much more at ease."

"Some people are just cruel," Jaehyun says.

Mark is too young to disagree with a prince, but the fact that this prince is sitting beside him like a friend makes him bold. "But it always looks like it's hard for him."

"He's always polite to me," Joohyun agrees. "Seems like it's just Jaehyun."

"Guess I'm special." He laughs. It's hurts, just a little.

"Do you know why?" Joohyun asks.

That hurts, too. "Yeah."

"Then you're better off than I thought you were." Joohyun smiles at him and runs a hand through her hair. She plucks the resumé from Jaehyun's hands and sets it down flat on her table. "Knowledge is power in everything, even in people."

"He doesn't want me to know him." Brittle.

"Doyoung is brilliant at a million things, but he sure sucks at making himself happy." Joohyun frowns. "And you're a bit blind."

Jaehyun rolls his eyes.

"It's a recipe for disaster." But she rests her chin in her palm and gives her prince a once over and finds him favorable, and some days that's all Jaehyun can hope for. "But you have the power to make it work, if you stop being so afraid of it."

He is afraid. He has been afraid, of Doyoung and of everything Doyoung could do to him, and that fear has gotten him nowhere near Doyoung's good graces. But honestly, he isn't certain which path leads back home.

Jaehyun shakes his head. "I'm lost with him."

Joohyun huffs. "I think it's mutual."

The best he can hope for.

* * *

"I'm gay."

The first time Jaehyun hears it aloud is at the tender age of fifteen from Jihyo, one of his school friends, and the second time is from his own mouth, a month later.

It echoes, bounces against the walls of the royal chamber, a mockery, and his mother stands ahead of him, intimidating and great. More than Jaehyun thinks he could ever be, when in this moment he feels so small.

There is a war brewing between the nearby lands, and Jaehyun has seen the advisors rushing to write treaties and compromises, drawing lines in sand. To Jaehyun it only means one thing: his marriage will be soon.

Nothing is as strong a union, other than maybe love.

And Jaehyun has spent night after night thinking about his future, coming to terms with his role in life. More than a month, or a year, but an entire lifetime of coming to terms with the fact that one day he will be king, and there will be so many people depending on him, and he feels a bit selfish standing here in front of his mother with this request.

He doesn't need to fall in love, but he'd like the chance.

In Jaehyun's mind, this is the moment he becomes a man.

"Oh, my boy." His mother stands up, her dress rustling, and she reaches up and pulls the crown from her head. Sets it down on the throne and takes the measured steps forward to where her son stands, and she cups his face. "I love you."

Not a queen, but a mother.

"I love you, no matter what."

It's what Jaehyun wants most in the entire world.

His mother isn't all powerful. Technically, her reach only extends to their borders, maybe further if the weight of her word is taken into account, and hopefully further still, if Jaehyun's marriage is prudent. She can't work miracles. She can only work with what she has, and take what she is able.

In that way, Jaehyun has always known he will take what he is given.

His marriage is pushed back and the discussions on compromises become a political dance, and their kingdom is too powerful to deny but not powerful enough that they can be rash.

The nice girl that was in discussion for the marriage is put on hold, and the queen sees what she can do for her son. There are no promises. There rarely are, in politics, before paper is signed.

So when his mother presents him with Kim Doyoung, Jaehyun sees this boy as a blessing. A gift he asked for and was given.

When Doyoung presents himself to Jung Jaehyun, it's nothing more than a bitter pill.

* * *

Jaehyun goes to town on his own — stupid, isn't he always reminding Doyoung to take someone along? But he has a goal that he thinks a normal, sane person would tell him is a bad plan, and he doesn't want to see reason when his vision runs red.

It's late at night, far past when he should be asleep. He was asleep, a couple of hours ago. Blissfully unaware. Woken up from the soft movement of his husband, tossing in bed.

"Johnny," Doyoung says, far away, to a dream. Whines.

Something snaps.

That tension that Jaehyun has been holding for month is broken and the rebound slaps him in the face, unrelenting. Stinging. _Johnny_, a name that Jaehyun has never realized he never wanted to hear in their bed.

It shouldn't bother him. It shouldn’t bother him at all. He knows why it bothers him and he hates himself, because it's useless to feel that way.

But he's half asleep and angry beyond belief, and he can't take it out on Doyoung because just this once he has someone else that he can brutalize with his feelings. So he puts on a jacket and shoes and he calls for a car, and when the car is ready he is still full of anger and there's no stopping him.

The night is dark, the street lights replace the stars and everything looks fake and empty, like a paper town. It's rained recently. The air is thick with him. Jaehyun pulls his jacket more tightly around him, shoulders his resolve.

Johnny's apartment complex looms in the skyline, a concrete giant that Jaehyun would topple if he could.

For what it's worth, Johnny lets him in, despite the hour.

The first time they met, they were both pretending. The second time they met, Jaehyun was pretending. The third time the meet, they're both bare of everything and the feeling of it is rancid.

Johnny wears a t-shirt and boxers and bedhead, and he doesn't look nearly as surprised to see Jaehyun as maybe he should. "I can make coffee," he says, after a wide-eyed greeting, and he finds his feet so quickly that Jaehyun wants to shake him.

"Don't bother," Jaehyun says, and it should be terse but it's just weighted and heavy. "I won't be long."

He takes off his shoes and they look odd by Johnny's door. Out of place. Jaehyun really should not be here. Why is he here? Because Doyoung dreams?

Because Doyoung has finally given himself the chance to be happy and Jaehyun is not a part of it?

The apartment is all modern edges and pristine white, with large photographs printed on the wall and greenery in every corner. It's a huge difference from the ornate grandeur of the castle, but it bleeds money. It's too large for one person.

Doyoung's scarf hangs over the back of the couch. He's been looking for it all day.

Jaehyun kind of wants to vomit.

"What do you have that I don't?" he demands, chest heavy, like he's run a while rather than sat in a car for forty minutes. His hands shake. He feels weak, vulnerable and horrid.

Johnny is standing in the doorway of his kitchen, shocked. The whirl of the coffee machine is enough to break the tense silence, and the smell of it makes the entire room feel warmer, almost safe, but Jaehyun knows better — this is enemy territory. He's made it enemy territory.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Johnny says, gentle. Jaehyun wonders if he has a temper.

He wants to pick at it, so he isn't the only one who's angry. Doyoung would always rise to his words. Johnny seems so balanced. Jaehyun wants to pick him apart but knows that he can't.

"Doyoung is happy with you." Jaehyun touches the embroidery on one of the throw pillows. Delicate. Jaehyun could rake his fingers over it and destroy it.

Have they slept on this couch? Have they kissed here, in this room? Ordered take out and laughed over a movie and been easy with each other in a way that Jaehyun can't grasp. He knows they have. Jaehyun wants to rip the room to shreds. He feels like an egg that's cracked on the pavement and now everyone can see his ugly insides boiling under the sun.

Is Doyoung the sun?

Pitiful.

"Why can't he be happy with me?" Jaehyun asks.

He should be embarrassed, wanting what a lesser man has, but Johnny is not a lesser man.

"Because you are everything he wanted and he hates you for it," Johnny replies evenly.

"He wanted to be king," Jaehyun says, acerbic, "but it would never have happened."

"He knows that." Johnny walks into the kitchen, out of sight. "Isn't that why it hurts so bad?"

Jaehyun follows Johnny and watches him pull two mugs out of the cupboard. He pours them both something warm and Jaehyun wonders if it will soothe the fire inside. He can't seem to put it out on his own — he's smothered it for months, but it feeds on something stronger than air.

"He's settling for me," Johnny says, handing Jaehyun a cup of coffee, black. "He doesn't love me. Love isn't what he was looking for. You knew that, right?"

Jaehyun looks at it and takes a bitter sip.

"He wanted something simple."

"It's his fault," Jaehyun spits. "He proposed this. He didn't want to work on things. He didn't _want_ to let me in."

Johnny pours a spoonful of sugar and stirs. "Did you try?"

Jaehyun cries for the first time in so long in front of someone he hates, and when he returns to his car he finds he hates himself more than anyone else.

No, he did not try. He agreed without question. He hesitated and it's taken more than a year of happiness from him, if they were ever capable of getting there.

"You can never really be together," Jaehyun reminds Johnny, staring at the coffee in his cup like it's poisoned and thinking he would gladly drink if it meant the end of all this. "This deal we made, it wasn't meant for any kind of forever."

"No, it wasn't," Johnny agrees, and for the first time something dark flashes across his face. "It was meant to make it easier to avoid you."

Well, Jaehyun thinks, if that was Doyoung's intention, it worked. It worked, and it was cruel, and Jaehyun kind of wishes he had realized that it was cruel earlier on.

Maybe he did know, and then he wishes he had said as much.

"Besides, Doyoung didn't mean for this to happen, either," Johnny says. He leans against the counter, casual despite talking to a king. "You think I'm his first affair? That's naïve."

It hits like cold water.

"Who?" Jaehyun croaks.

Johnny looks so sorry for him, it's disgusting. Jaehyun is disgusted with himself. "Jungwoo and Doyoung were close long before you met. You can't blame him for it."

It's not surprising. It's just another thing to add to a growing mountain.

"I won't say that I'm fond of you," Johnny tells him an hour later, when he sends him out the door with one of fifty travel mugs and a disapproving look. "I care about Doyoung. I know we can't be long term, but I care about him. I'm not sure you're good for each other."

Jaehyun lifts his chin. "I don't care what you think."

Johnny smirks, and it's an incredulous thing. Insulting, and tired. "Then why did you come here?"

Jaehyun doesn't know. Horribly, insufferably, pitifully doesn't know.

* * *

King Gongmyung's coronation means many things. For Jaehyun and his future country, it mean solidifying a shaky leadership, and business deals that will work in both their favors, per their favorable union.

For Doyoung, it means something incredibly different.

"Why are you hiding this from me?" Doyoung demands, when he shakes the official invitation in Jaehyun's face. "It's my own brother — you think I don't know he's to be crowned?"

Joohyun hides a smile in her hand. Sooyoung laughs outright, shaking her head.

Jaehyun stares at his husband, this fuming man, and finds himself at a loss. It happens often, with Doyoung, because it seems that everything triggers his anger. Jaehyun organizes the papers in front of him, mail and documents and other things, and wonders which rat gave Doyoung the invitation in the first place.

"I wasn't aware you kept in contact," is the cool reply, once he's thought about it long enough.

Doyoung's anger wanes, just enough to clue Jaehyun onto the fact that he's right; they don't keep in contact. But Doyoung isn't the type to step down. He just cools. "I can read a paper."

It's absurd. Jaehyun can't stop himself from smiling, a hint of amusement that makes Doyoung's face burn red, despite the chill. "Next time your brother is coronated, I won't hide it from you."

"Don't mess with me." Doyoung sets the invitation down on Jaehyun's desk, and it feels more like a decree than anything Jaehyun has signed in days. "We're attending."

Joohyun is stoic and Sooyoung's mouth is a perfect circle, and Jaehyun hates that they're here, because this is a weakness he has barely admitted to himself — the fact that he would probably give Doyoung anything, if he asked.

Sometimes, giving in is the only way to shut Doyoung up. Other times, it's more voluntary. Those times are the ones that Jaehyun is frightened of.

So he holds onto to this, for a moment or two, knowing that Doyoung will rip his stance to shreds because that's what Doyoung is best at. He looks at Doyoung with calm, quiet eyes. "He didn't attend our wedding."

"I am not my brother," Doyoung replies, proud.

Insufferable, maybe, but Jaehyun thinks he admires it some days.

"Besides," Doyoung continues, hands on his hips, "our wedding was a farce. This is the future."

It's hard to tell when Doyoung means to be hurtful and when he's stating what he thinks to be true. Jaehyun supposes he can't hold it against him, when Jaehyun himself has never taken the time to convince him it's false.

Jaehyun isn't sure that it's false; they surely are a farce.

"He'll have to attend it alone, you know," Joohyun reminds him, once Doyoung has left. "I'm not sure he realizes that."

"We can reschedule the meeting," Jaehyun says.

Sooyoung looks at him crookedly. "It's with foreign leadership to discuss annexing the western state."

"It's months in advance."

"It was her _first availability_."

"We can reschedule the meeting," Jaehyun tells Joohyun.

Sooyoung is new, but Joohyun knows when Jaehyun is a mountain rather than the sea. She nods, lips pursed, and pulls out her tablet. "I'll work on it."

* * *

An angel, that's what the tabloids call him.

Used to call him.

Now they call him all sorts of things.

"How could you do this?" Doyoung demands, slamming the newspaper down on the table between them. "After _everything_, all that we worked on and agreed on and discussed, you're stupid enough to do this at a public event?" He's screaming, red in the face, and Jaehyun idly flips through the paper, seeing his image plastered on the front page. "Were you asking to be caught?"

Yes. Jaehyun thinks he was.

He stands up fromorm the table. "Are you done?" It's too early. The coffee in his mug is half-empty, too cold, and his hangover doesn't bother him as much as the rage in Doyoung's eyes, so he ignores one in favor of the other. "I need to find something for my head."

"You'll need more than Ibuprofen," Doyoung says, incredulous, almost in awe, like he never imagined that his husband would be so stupid. "We need to talk about this."

Jaehyun looks him, dead in the eye. "No."

Doyoung is breathing so hard. His shoulders are shaking.

"We agreed that we could see other people, didn't we?"

"_Discreetly_," Doyoung says, and it's oddly hollow. Searching. "There's nothing discreet about you sticking your tongue down Jungwoo's throat at a party."

"No," Jaehyun agrees. The sordid picture on the front page. He's glad that Jungwoo's face at least is blurred. There would be even worse words, maybe, if it came out that it was his husband's bodyguard, and they'd have no choice but to fire him. "But don't pretend you've never done it."

"You're incredible," Doyoung says, vile. "What Jungwoo and I do doesn't matter, because we did it behind closed doors. This?" He slams his hand down on the paper. "This is disgraceful. Embarrassing for _me._ Is that what you wanted?"

"No."

"_Is that all you can say?_" It's loud. It rings. This is a strange tone for Doyoung, who vacillates between poison and indifference. Accusatory, barbed, even, Jaehyun has heard that tone of Doyoung's voice. This one is harder to pin down.

Jaehyun picks up the paper. He looks debauched. There are surely people on the internet who expected that he and his husband had this kind of arrangement, but the majority are calling him an adulterer. He supposes he deserves it.

"Can we end this?" Jaehyun asks, soft. Weak. His voice cracks.

He isn't sure what he's asking for, whether it's big or small or something else. But he needs this to be over.

"You're meant to be something," Doyoung says gravely, snatching the article from Jaehyun's hands so violently that cold coffee spills from Jaehyun's cup. "So _be something_. Something other than this."

Jaehyun would like to be. Really, he would.

* * *

Jaehyun is a man now, but he wasn't always. He was a child once, and one day he will be more than a man, a king. He watches Doyoung walk away and decides that now, in this moment, he is a coward.

* * *

Jaehyun has his own dreams, his own desires, his own goals, but they seem different in the daylight. In the morning, he wants different things. At night, everything is painted a couple of shades darker, and everything runs wild.

The lack of control over his own head — maybe that's the thing that ruins him the most.

He dreams in red, of bodies and hands and sheets and something simple.

"Doyoung," he whines in his dreams, clutching onto something that isn't his to hold, that doesn't want to be held, that will run away from him over and over everywhere except in his own head.

And even there still, he manages to disappear, because there's a hand on his shoulder and a voice in his ear and it's not a dream. It's real. And Jaehyun is awake.

Reality looks a lot like his dream. The same cast, the same room, the same bed, but Doyoung looks completely unimpressed with him. That is the biggest difference, that the Doyoung in his dreams gives in to him and this Doyoung would never. Unyielding.

There's electricity between them, as always, but it changes when Jaehyun closes his eyes. This kind of heat, this stiff anger, is more what Jaehyun is used to.

Dreams are nice, but only while they last.

"Really?" Doyoung huffs, hovering over him. His hair is tousled, halfway to bedhead, and his eyes are full of burning fire. The line of his mouth is impassive, expression carefully critical, but the mask is halfway down. Eyes are the windows to the soul. Maybe Doyoung only has one at night.

Jaehyun throws an arm over his eyes. He's overheated, uncomfortable, flushed into something shameful. Sensitive. The sheets themselves are almost too much. "Did you wake me up to embarrass me?"

It's quiet, for a moment, and then Doyoung snorts. "You should be embarrassed."

Jaehyun snorts too, and he moves his arm away from his face to look Doyoung in the eyes, wry. "I refuse to be ashamed of wanting my husband."

It is, perhaps, the biggest confession he's made.

Doyoung is too tired to be scathing. In fact, Jaehyun has the sneaking suspicion that Doyoung is too tired to think properly, because the sun grows closer and closer to rising and his hand is still on Jaehyun's shoulder.

"Did our wedding night really do so much for you?" Doyoung asks finally, all condescension, but there's something impish underneath it all, if Jaehyun looks for it.

"Our wedding night was one of the most embarrassing nights of my life," Jaehyun spits, but he's also too tired for true vitriol. Doyoung's hand is on his chest now, and it burns. Like everything Doyoung is, it burns.

His eyes, fire. Leaning closer. Wicked. "Are you sure you aren't thinking of the morning after?"

_Never again._

There are few chances for Jaehyun to stare at his husband this way, this close, where he can see pores and sweat and the wrinkles from the pillow case. But Doyoung looks wild like this, like something natural that crept up from the earth and is here to ruin him. Jaehyun's dreams line up a little closer with reality when Doyoung is looking at him this way.

Jaehyun's hand reaches out, almost against his will, fingertips pressing into the flat of Doyoung's stomach, and it's a question more than anything.

It's lazy, this feeling, like they're both tired of pulling apart and — in this moment — the path of least resistance is to fall closer together. Does Doyoung realize he's doing it? Jaehyun can feel breath against his cheek. Hands travel down. Thoughtless.

Jaehyun wants to unravel but knows if he does, he will never recover.

Doyoung would never let him.

He tangles his fingers in the material of Doyoung's shirt, not out of desire. Angry. Tense. White-knuckled. "What do you dream about?" Jaehyun asks, because he wants it to hurt, and he knows that's what Doyoung wants, deep down.

Doyoung's hand is on Jaehyun's hip now, fingers splayed over bone, and he's a huge shadow, looming. His mouth is close. If Jaehyun hated the both of them less, perhaps he would kiss him. "What do you think I dream about?" Doyoung's voice is delicate.

"Being king?" Jaehyun asks, hand slipping beneath Doyoung's shirt. Doyoung's face is flushed, but the fire in his eyes flickers. "A better husband?" Fingernails raking on bare skin. "Johnny?"

Human beings are moving, constantly, and between the two of them someone is always pushing, but Doyoung freezes, stone. For a second, a heart beat, the hand on Jaehyun's hip hold tight enough to bruise, but then Doyoung pulls away and Jaehyun can breathe again.

"I don't dream," Doyoung says quietly, head hitting the pillow. "What's the point?"

"You don't get to decide what you dream about," Jaehyun replies, staring at the ceiling. The fan makes its rounds. His heart sputters. Jaehyun holds it in a vice until he stops feeling the rhythm of it.

If they could control their own minds, Jaehyun thinks they'd both have a different dream. Something more attainable.

"Clearly," Doyoung tells the opposite wall, pulling the sheets up to his chin. "Dream of me, hmm? I'll laugh about it in the morning."

Clearly.

* * *

"You and Doyoung slept together?" Jaehyun is full of questions, and the liquor in his cup, on his tongue, makes them slip out easily. They're heavy and Jaehyun's stomach is heavy and he wants to be free.

Jungwoo looks at Jaehyun critically, up and down, elevator eyes. It's improper, because the Gala is bustling around them and Jaehyun should be talking with people who matter and not his husband's body guard, standing in the shadows at attention. He shouldn't be distracting anyone.

"Why?" Jungwoo asks, amused.

"You can tell me," Jaehyun says, tongue thick. "I don't care either way."

"If you didn't care, you wouldn't ask," Jungwoo replies, and he's grinning. His smile is so delicate. He's different that Doyoung, but he's complicated and difficult in the same way. Jungwoo bends, gives, and Doyoung doesn't. Jungwoo leans into Jaehyun, and Doyoung doesn't. "Especially when you know the answer."

They slept together. Multiple times, both before and after Doyoung and Jaehyun were married. Not since Doyoung started seeing Johnny, because it was a need and not a want, and now that need has been satisfied in other ways, at least on Doyoung's part.

"I don't fall in love," Jungwoo says easily, breathing heavy against Jaehyun's neck. "I'm ideal for no strings."

Jungwoo knows all of Jaehyun's secrets, by the end of the night. Even those that are lethal.

Even those that Jaehyun won't admit to himself until it's over and he can't stop himself from wanting something else, someone else. He cries in Jungwoo's arms in a way he hasn't since before his wedding, with his mother telling him to be good.

"Have you decided whether you care or not?" Jungwoo asks, and he runs his hands through Jaehyun's hair, that casual comfort. Their skin is sticky, a fever dream, but Jaehyun wishes they had done this and this only, because it's soothes more than anything else he's tried.

"I care," Jaehyun says.

God, he cares.

* * *

The Queen steps down and turns the throne over to her only son, King Jaehyun, and his Royal Consort, Prince Doyoung. It's all over the papers. The coronation is the only thing in the news for days.

Jaehyun was raised on ceremony, but truly he's tired of it. The fittings for his robes drag on for hours, even if the tailor is a wicked man who makes the time pass quickly. "Stop squirming, dear," Ten says, purposefully sticking pins into Jaehyun's thigh.

Doyoung loves him.

He has his own robes to be fitted for, no less grand, but he goes through the motions rather somber. The fabric is pinned to his shoulders and he looks at his reflection with a soft smile and no words.

Jaehyun wishes Doyoung would smile like that at him.

Ten leaves them both for a moment, to find more fabric and different colors, but truthfully Jaehyun isn't sure that Doyoung's garb can be improved. He looks regal, a sad and beautiful god. Untouchable.

Doyoung's eyes in the mirror trace over seam and gild. "I hate this moment."

"Why?" Jaehyun asks, a precious step. It's hard to tell, some days, whether Jaehyun's words will send Doyoung over the edge or pull him closer. Everything about him is hard but he looks soft.

"Because today, I will never be king."

Doyoung steps off the pedestal when Ten returns and asks for the robes to be removed.

"Who am I kidding?" Doyoung asks. Asks the room, and maybe himself, but never Jaehyun, who only hears it as a bystander. A stranger. His husband. "I would never have been king."

Jaehyun thinks he would make Doyoung king if he could. Jaehyun knows now that he would do anything for Doyoung. Give him the world, if he thought Doyoung would take it.

* * *

"What have you done?"

Jaehyun is speaking with the Head of State, not for business reasons. They're chatting idly in the corridor. He would go so far as to say that he's fond of Nayeon, although he isn't certain they are friends. Still, she's friendly, and they get along well during the meetings, which is more than he can say for some of his staff. There are still men and women that his mother appointed, and although he values her judgement, he doesn't value the judgement of those people.

Since he's been crowned, it's been a slow process to wade through the potential and find what is lacking. It will take him longer to fill the gaps. Nayeon is one of those people.

Doyoung is also one of those people, when he wants to be.

Now, Doyoung looks like a devil, or a storm, and he comes barreling down the hallway like an angry ghost. It's a shocking picture, and even Nayeon stumbles over her words when she gets a glimpse of him over Jaehyun shoulder. "We can talk later, Your Majesty." She bows.

She's gone.

"What have I done?" Jaehyun asks owlishly. The vitriol Doyoung spits is more than Jaehyun can imagine incurring, and he rifles through all his transgressions in chronological order and doesn't find anything that could ruin their temporary peace this way.

Since the tabloids spin rumors about them every day, they've come to a careful compromise: do not speak to each other.

Doyoung's fingers dig into his arm, and as Jaehyun is pulled to privacy he wonders, truly wonders, if this will come to blows. It wouldn't be the first time, but it's been ages since the fire was lit this hot, and Jaehyun is confused, lost. "You absolute _bastard_—"

There are whispers as they pass the advisory.

"Please ruin me somewhere quiet," Jaehyun hisses, pulling back at Doyoung's grip. "I won't be dragged around and slandered, not even by you."

Doyoung pulls him close, chest to chest, so abruptly that Jaehyun's mind grinds to a halt. "You will mostly certainly be slandered by me, after everything." His breath is hot against Jaehyun's lips.

Jaehyun shivers.

Doyoung tosses Jaehyun into an empty room and shuts the door behind them. It's an unused hall, dusty, and the light streaming in from the window makes things almost nostalgic. In some ways, it is — this Doyoung burns more like the one he married. The sky is orange. Rain is coming.

"How _dare_ you?" Doyoung demands, tension at an all-time high. Jaehyun isn't sure he's ever seen his husband this way, even at the beginning, when his anger was petty and distant. This feels closer. Jaehyun doesn't like it.

"I..." Jaehyun stares at Doyoung uselessly. "What have I done?"

"You ruined everything," Doyoung answers, like he's marking a grave. "I might have overlooked your indiscretion with Jungwoo, whatever. I don't pretend like I understand your dick and what it wants. I _don't care._ But this? Really?"

A bit ragged, a broken edge.

Jaehyun bristles. "Stop acting like I understand you. I don't know why you're so angry. I'm clueless."

"Fuck if I don't know that." Doyoung looms closer, stabbing a finger into Jaehyun's chest. "_Clueless._ You don't care about anyone, maybe not even yourself. You're so fucking _selfish._"

Coolly, Jaehyun pushes the finger aside, the accusation aside. "I'm not having a conversation with you if all you're trying to do is be cruel. I'm done trying."

"Oh, but you'll have a conversation with Johnny?" Doyoung presses, all ire. "You don't want to talk to me but you'll march into town on your high horse and fill his head with fucking nonsense?"

Ah.

"I can do whatever I want," Jaehyun replies, temperature rising. "I can talk to whomever I want. Don't make presumptions."

"Johnny was mine." Doyoung looks wild. His hair is clean cut and his clothes are perfectly tailored but there's something absolutely chaotic about him in this moment. Desperate, maybe. Jaehyun's heart beats faster. "Are you so fucking blind that you'll take away the only thing that made me happy? Are you so _stupid_—"

"I didn't take anything away from you," Jaehyun spits. "I talked to him, I didn't throw him in the dungeons."

"Whatever you said to him, it worked." Doyoung is all red fire and blue ice, cold and burning and under Jaehyun's skin like it's the only place he knows how to be. "He left me. I hope you're fucking happy."

Jaehyun swallows down his comeback. Something inside pops like a balloon. "Oh, Doyoung."

"Are you pitying me?" Doyoung asks, laughing. "Save it. I'll never forgive you for it."

"I didn't tell him to leave you," Jaehyun says, and it's the truth. Because at the time Jaehyun hadn't been capable of growing claws. He looks back now and is ashamed at his weakness, at his blind anger, at the emotions that prevented him from behaving reasonably, but Johnny was the stronger will at that time. Nothing Jaehyun said would ever have changed him. "I cried in his kitchen and stole his travel mug and then I left."

"You have more power than you know," Doyoung says, heavy. He pushes Jaehyun, and he goes, and it hurts, like his ribs are cracking open. "We can never be together. We're not meant for forever. Do those words sound familiar?"

They do. "He also told me you didn't love him."

"That's not his decision." Doyoung's fists shake with anger. He's really beautiful. The sky is darkening and so is he. Jaehyun shakes himself. "It's _my_ decision. It should have been my decision."

Jaehyun looks at Doyoung, chin high and proud, eyes like lightning. "Do you love him?"

Doyoung laughs, scoffs, but it takes a moment for the surprise to fade away. "You told me you didn't want to know."

"I changed my mind."

"How on brand." HisIs eyebrows are drawn, and he stares at Jaehyun like he wants to rip him apart with his bare hands, but there's something vulnerable underneath it all. "I wanted to love him. Is that enough for you?" His mouth quivers.

Jaehyun stares.

He's pushed again, and the heat in Doyoung's eyes is back. "Pitiful." Spitting. "You're _pitiful._ I hate you. I don't want to be happy with you. Never."

Jaehyun's ribs are already cracked. Might as well pry out his insides. "But could you be?"

A hand slaps his cheek, and things snaps sideways.

Doyoung stares at his palm, bright red. The anger drops down, down into the floorboards, sinks into the earth and diffuses into the concrete. Without it, they're empty, and pull between them is too strong to ignore.

Jaehyun touches his face with a shaking hand.

His husband's eyes are far away, trying to solve countless problems and finding no solutions. Lost. Lost in this. His hand falls uselessly to his side.

They stare at each other. Rain hits window panes. Something breaks.

"Do you really hate the idea of me that much?" Jaehyun asks.

It is, perhaps, the bravest thing he's ever done.

Doyoung opens his mouth, breathes, and finds the answer lacking. "Just go."

Jaehyun does. He pushes past Doyoung with more aggression than is necessary, and he's confused because he has more weapons to throw and decides to let them lie. He slams the door behind him, the end of a conversation he didn't want to have, and doesn't mention that he talked with Johnny months ago, and this decision had little to do with it.

He doesn't tell Doyoung that he wants, and he wants desperately.

Both of those things, he thinks, Doyoung already knows.

* * *

"You have such an even temper," Joohyun notes, as soon as the door of the courtroom closes behind them both. "It's fascinating."

Jaehyun looks at her, sharp, and then takes the moment to roll the tension out of his shoulders. "Politics bring out the coldest parts of me," he admits. "I'll rip those men and women apart in my dreams tonight." Holding your tongue, that's the most important thing when your words topple countries.

"Isn't that your husband's job?" his advisor asks cutely, and Jaehyun rolls his eyes at her and pushes her down the hallway. "Easy, easy. These heels are delicate."

"Don't talk to me about my husband," Jaehyun says, dark.

The Royal Consort is still in the courtroom, writing vicious notes onto the document presented to them. He'd looked at Jaehyun with cold eyes whenever the King suggested they retire, and Doyoung had simply looked over Jaehyun's shoulder and said, "I'd like to continue this discussion, if I may."

Holding your tongue, that's the most important thing.

"What is it about him, I wonder?" Joohyun asks, and it takes a moment for Jaehyun to realize she's talking to him.

"Who?" He pauses, rolling thoughts around in his mouth before he spits them out. "Doyoung?"

Joohyun tucks her hair behind her ear, checks her phone, stars an email. "Yes."

"What about him?"

She sighs. "What is it about him that brings out the worst of you?"

If politics make Jaehyun cold, Doyoung turns Jaehyun into a raging fire.

"You have such an even temper," Joohyun is saying, "Until he looks at you, and then you're flaring up at nothing."

"Is that the worst of me?" Jaehyun muses. "Maybe we're just awful for each other." That, more than anything, should be obvious.

Joohyun's smile is tight. "I'm not sure that's it."

Jaehyun's chest is tight. "I don't think so, either."

* * *

When the car arrives in town, it's still raining.

"This is fine," he tells the driver, who makes a worried noise and looks at the sky.

"At least allow me to take you further into town, Your Majesty," Dejun tries. "There's not much out here."

Jaehyun ignores that his driver speaks out of turn. "There's plenty." They're sordid kinds of places, places that a king should never enter, but he isn't feeling much like royalty. He feels like a corpse, something empty and rotten on the inside.

He slams the car door shut and his dress shoes touch pavement as Dejun rolls down his window.

"Please call me when you're ready to return," the man says gently. His face is somber. He knows that something has happened and is afraid to say anything, but he's not afraid to step too far when the man in front of him is so weak. "Or text me. I'll come, no matter what."

"Thank you." Jaehyun bows his head. "I don't deserve your kindness."

Rotten.

The rain soaks him through in a matter of moments. His clothes are ruined, his shoes are likely ruined, and that alone is more money wasted than most people in this area would ever see. He hadn't changed. He hadn't planned. He'd just left.

_Just go_, Doyoung asked of him, and like a fool, Jaehyun goes.

It's a lonely night. The orange sky turned dark quickly, and the humidity sticks to Jaehyun's skin perhaps more tightly than the rain or his shame. There are small stalls lining the road, and the night market is larger than Jaehyun would expect in this part of town. Still, the prices are good, and Jaehyun spends a dollar or two on sweets that don't make him feel better but fill him with something.

He wanders.

As someone who has always had plans, schedules, routines, traditions, this is frightening. Overwhelming. Lonely. He walks down the street without an umbrella, finding shelter under awnings. Some of the vendors stares at him, recognition bright on their faces, but no one says anything. He is sure someone will send something to a paper, perhaps the teenagers snapping photos of him on the street corner. He looks like a ruin, and vaguely he hopes that's what they'll write in the morning. _King Jaehyun, A Drowned Rat, Buys Fruit and Cries in the Rain._

It's funny, somewhere.

Jaehyun wants to go home but his bed is ruined and his peace is in shatters on the floor.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. Some messages from his mother, more still from Jungwoo.

One from Doyoung — _Don't come back unless you're sure of something, for once._

Jaehyun laughs.

It startles the birds on the sidewalk and the woman selling apples by the alley. It startles Jaehyun, even, because it sounds a bit genuine. How perfect; one last biting remark to send Jaehyun to the gutters.

Sure of something? Has Doyoung ever made that easy? Is it Jaehyun's fault that nothing is simple and Doyoung is difficult to cross?

Maybe. If Doyoung is sure of something, everything else falls to the wayside.

A shadow falls over him, and for a moment Jaehyun wonders if his personal storm clouds have caught up with him, but then he realizes the patter of rain on his head has stopped. "Are you alright?"

He turns.

There's a man there, beautiful in a delicate kind of way, holding a clear umbrella over them both.

There's no spark of anything, not even concern, certainly not recognition.

"I'm fine," Jaehyun says.

"Okay." The man does move, he just sticks his free hand in his pocket and stands awkwardly. "Do you need me to buy you an umbrella?"

Jaehyun frowns. "Seriously?" He doesn't need anyone to buy him anything. He could probably walk into a store and they'd _give_ him an umbrella.

"You can say no." The man rolls his eyes. He turns on his heels then. "You just look lost."

He is. Jaehyun is so lost. "Do you know who I am?"

Over his shoulder, still rather expressionless. "Should I?"

"I like that you don't." Honest.

The man sighs and checks the time on his phone. "I have a dryer at my house," he says. "And a ceiling, since you don't want an umbrella."

"I don't even know your name."

"Sicheng." The man smiles, brilliant, and a while ago it would do something to Jaehyun's chest, but now it just seems like a comfort. "Are you coming?"

And Jaehyun doesn't have a place to return to, because he's not sure of anything, and he can't stay here, and he has already destroyed himself for nothing. There's nothing left to do.

He huddles under Sicheng's umbrella. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," Sicheng says. "You look like a sad dog. I'm pitying you."

For once, the thought of it makes Jaehyun laugh.

* * *

Doyoung is traveling, has been traveling for the past month, and the castle is quiet.

Jaehyun's coronation is drawing near, and this is one of the last times Doyoung will be able to got back to his home country and visit his family as one of them. He's already a prince, and will always be a prince, but there's an undeniable shift on the horizon.

"Would you like to go home," Jaehyun offered, late at night when they were at peace, "before I'm crowned?"

It isn't proper, really, for Doyoung to be traveling on his own. Jungwoo will be there, of course, taking the time to visit his own family on top of keeping an eye on precious blood, but Jaehyun should be traveling at his husband's side. It's what the press would want. Anything less than that is cause for twittering, rumors, something sinister, but Jaehyun also knows that Doyoung would rather go alone.

So Doyoung goes alone.

He hasn't seen his family since Gongmyung's coronation. Something is overdue — if not something sweet, then something necessary.

Doyoung's eyes are empty as he waves goodbye. Jaehyun thinks Doyoung must be far away if he's willingly being civil.

The castle is so empty without Doyoung. Even at his quietest and most contemplative, he's got weight. He takes up space. He makes sure Jaehyun knows he's there. Normally it seems like a challenge, like a stance Doyoung is taking — _I belong here, this place is mine, move over_ — but now Jaehyun wonders if Doyoung sensed the emptiness and wanted to fill it.

Jaehyun looks for the weight of his husband and finds nothing.

His bed is cold.

It is always cold these days, but despite many opportunities Jaehyun doesn't warm it.

He's lonely. It's a bitter pill. Not a surprising one, but it goes down his throat like a boulder.

Jaehyun is angry when Doyoung is here, and he's lonely when Doyoung is gone.

He doesn't know how Doyoung feels. He thinks that Doyoung is always angry, and doubts that his husband is any more lonely when Jaehyun is not there. Doyoung has the air of someone who would rather be lonely than release their pride.

The longer they know each other, Jaehyun thinks they might be similar in all the worst ways.

Brutal.

It's a beautiful day, and Jaehyun is sitting on a bench in the courtyard, a book open in his lap that he's been slowly reading as the days pass by. The clouds are lazy. The chefs gave him a lunch, spread out on a blanket at his side.

Lonely, but sometimes lonely feels sweeter and turns into peace. Jaehyun thinks that's where he is.

A car pulls up in the driveway, and Jaehyun watches for a solid minute before he remembers that Doyoung is returning today.

Doyoung steps out of the car, an impressive figure, and Jaehyun sets his book down and looks. Really looks.

His husband looks unhappy, but he's always unhappy.

The main entrance sits behind Jaehyun, and Doyoung has to pass him if he wants to go inside, but Jaehyun doesn't mind that his husband catches him staring. Doyoung doesn't seem to mind catching him, too tired and unhappy to snap his teeth or claw skin.

He pulls his jacket a little tighter to his chest and walks past.

Stops.

Jaehyun looks up at him. Doyoung doesn't say anything, just exists there, unsure, and returns the favor of staring.

There's an apple nestled among Jaehyun's lunch, and he picks it up and holds it out silently. Pink. Sweet.

A moment, and when Doyoung reaches out, it's for Jaehyun's shoulder. Just presses his hand there for some immeasurable amount of time, and Jaehyun can feel how tired he is. Doyoung is heavy, for someone so hollow.

But he takes the apple.

He takes everything he wants, and gives as good as he's got, but in that moment, he takes the apple and leaves.

Jaehyun wonders when this became something he wanted.

* * *

Jaehyun returns late at night. He'd spent his evening in Sicheng's apartment, long after the dryer had done it's work on Jaehyun's clothes. They'd talked about plenty of things, although he has stayed very vague about his work. Sicheng clearly knew that Jaehyun was someone important, but he was also a foreigner, freshly moved to town for work, and there were no Kings or Consorts where he was from. There was something much harsher. He likes it better here, he says, because at least here he's left alone.

Sicheng admires Jaehyun's coat, saved from its impromptu bath, and Jaehyun laughs. "I'll trade you for a hoodie," he says warmly, and the man looks at him like he's stupid.

"This coat is like, a thousand dollars."

Jaehyun shrugs. "It's warm. It gets cold here. Everyone needs a good coat."

"Whatever, you freak." Sicheng had thrown something old and worn at him and Jaehyun found comfort in it. Sicheng is comfortable in a way that Jaehyun hasn't been in a long time.

It's not enough, really, but Jaehyun can see why Doyoung sought out someone like Johnny. Something simple. Something destined to fail.

Jaehyun leaves Sicheng his number — not for anything particularly sordid. Sicheng is brand new to town and excellent company, and Jaehyun hasn't made a new friend in so long. He might be able to use the help. Jaehyun is already thinking of how to compensate Sicheng for his time, and his food, and his safety.

The floorboards creak as Jaehyun takes the stairs down to the street and calls Dejun. The driver barely blinks at Jaehyun's change of costume, he just bows respectfully and holds the door open.

It's a quiet drive back to the castle. "I hope you're feeling better, sir."

"Dejun?" Sharp.

And hesitation. "Yes, Your Majesty?"

"You can call me Jaehyun."

They both smile at each other in the mirror. Jaehyun thinks he could fly, once he gets rid of his shackles. It's the next thing on his to-do list.

His heart grows heavier as his feet take him closer to his chambers. He's not sure what he will find. Maybe he should have spent his time planning what he would say, but he wants something so badly and has no idea how to deal with it, beyond recognizing that the desire is there.

Joohyun told him to give his desires roots. Jaehyun thinks he needs to do that before dreaming of happiness.

Doyoung is waiting for him.

That's what it looks like, at least, when Jaehyun enters his bedroom and finds his husband sitting on the balcony, an empty glass of wine in his hand. The bottle is half empty, but there's no tell-tale flush on Doyoung's face, and his eyes are clear. The wind rustles his hair.

It looks rather romantic, like something from a fairy tale. The handsome prince, in his tower, untouchable.

He doesn't look at Jaehyun when he enters. He doesn't move, just gestures to the wine glass sitting on the bed side table and says nothing. Jaehyun is full of tea and cheap pizza, but he pours himself some wine anyway.

"Did you miss me?" Jaehyun asks.

Doyoung still does not turn to him. "You're in good humor," he grumbles. "Some of us are heartbroken."

"Some of us, yes." Jaehyun hums. The air is so heavy, but the rain has stopped. The castle grounds look beautiful. The gardeners are assessing the damage of the storm, but it's still beautiful.

Doyoung looks now, takes in Jaehyun fully. "Did you find a nice piece of ass on your trip?"

The hoodie. "A friend, maybe." Jaehyun's fingers play with the strings of the hood. "He made me tea and I told him I didn't want to sleep with him." He laughs. "He was relieved."

Quiet.

"Don't pretend like me sleeping with those men hurt you," Jaehyun requests. "It's what you wanted me to do, wasn't it?"

"I'm not hurt," Doyoung says, and he's tired. This years-long battle, they're finally both tired of. "That would be hypocritical."

"I'm a hypocrite," Jaehyun says idly. He grins into his wine glass. "But for what it's worth, I’m sorry about Johnny."

Doyoung swallows. "I know it was foolish, to pretend like it was a real relationship." He takes a sip, mouth red. "Johnny wants to be married someday. I could never do that for him."

Jaehyun doesn't reply.

"I don't know if I would have, had I been able."

"I didn't speak with him to make him leave you," Jaehyun admits softly. He shakes his head. He watches the men and women inspect petal after petal and his mind is far away. "I went to him because I was jealous, and I didn't know what he had that I didn't."

"And?"

"He told me you were settling for him."

Doyoung laughs, but it's wet. "That idiot." He swallows. The wine in his glass shakes, spills onto the grass below, somewhere unseen. "I wasn't settling."

Jaehyun hums. "You can tell him that, if you want."

"And what of you?" Doyoung glares at him out of the corner of his eye. "Will you go back to the man that gave you the hoodie and thank him profusely?"

"He'd rather kill me, I think." Jaehyun laughs. He's laughing an awful lot these days. Doyoung looks struck by something. "No, I think I'd stay here and feel bad for myself, much like I have been, but at least I'll feel a bit better." He raises his glass. "Neither of us speak plainly, do we?"

Doyoung frowns at him, and something hurts. "You know my feelings."

"You don't want to be happy with me." Jaehyun nods. "I'm not sure you want to be happy at all."

"Don't say that to me."

"Am I special to you?" Jaehyun asks.

Doyoung's eyes are wide, and maybe he's not entirely sober because his mask is on the floor.

"Is it because you resent me, for being king?" Jaehyun leans closer. Their shoulders brush. "Or is it because you are attracted to me, and you hate yourself for it?"

The way Doyoung reels is beautiful. Jaehyun rarely has the upper hand. "Are you stupid?"

"The very first time I saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen." There are cards in Jaehyun's hand and he sets them out of the table, tired of poker faces. Over how many months, not a single hand worked. "I thanked God, I think, and my mother, because I saw you and I thought to myself, _this will work._"

Doyoung's mouth is turned down, and in his vulnerability his confusion is clear, guilty and plain. "You got a rude awakening."

"I'm sorry for not trying harder," Jaehyun says, and he leans further in, because Doyoung has run away too many times. Or is it Jaehyun who has run, and Doyoung who’s been standing firm? "I'm sorry for not saying I didn't want an open relationship. I'm sorry for not being strong enough to contend with you, when you decided you'd rather hate us both than build something worth the trouble."

Something shifts, and Doyoung puts a hand on Jaehyun's shoulder and pushes with all his strength. "This is not what I want."

Jaehyun straightens, but he doesn't leave. "What do you want?"

"I want to be _king!_"

His hand is still on Jaehyun's chest. Jaehyun covers it with his own. He wonders if Doyoung can feel his heart beat. "Is that all?"

Doyoung is a volcano erupting. "_All?_ It's everything."

"It's not." Jaehyun doesn't know a plainer way to say it. "It's not everything."

"That's easy for you to say, when it's something you've had since birth." Doyoung can certainly feel his heartbeat, because his hand certainly has not moved. "I fought tooth and nail to be worthy of it, made a fool of myself in front of the public by challenging my brother, and was only told the truth when they presented me with _you._"

Jaehyun knows why Doyoung resents him, because Jaehyun's father was King and his mother was Queen.

Doyoung's father was King and his mother is a school teacher.

"You took everything away from me." Doyoung has never cried in front of Jaehyun, not a single time. It's just another first. It's funny, because Doyoung lives in extremes, but the tears on his face are soft, and Jaehyun wants to wipe them away with his thumb, so he does.

And Doyoung lets him.

He frowns, face contorting like his own barbs have torn his own stomach apart, and he's shaking, but he lets Jaehyun wipe the tears off of his face.

"I hate you," he says, and it's plain, finally. It's plain. "I hate you so much. I don't know what to do with you."

"I hate me, too."

Doyoung laughs, warbling. "Stop."

"Okay." Jaehyun grins. "Whatever you want."

"Don't pretend like you're in love with me," Doyoung says, and he wipes his own eyes. "You're just jealous that someone else got me and you didn't."

Jaehyun takes the wine glass from Doyoung's hand and sets it down, and he wipes Doyoung's face with the sleeves of his hoodie, and he measures his words carefully. Not like a politician, finally, but like someone who cares. Because he does.

"I would let Johnny have you forever," Jaehyun says. "I would let you live with him and I'd never see you again because I own an entire kingdom but I don't own you. And I think I would miss you every day." He looks at his husband so carefully, gently, and it's the softest thing there's ever been between them besides the bed sheets. "And I want to know you, because not knowing infuriates me."

"I hate you," Doyoung repeats.

Jaehyun has unchained his shackles and flies. "I'm not asking you to love me."

"But I do," Doyoung says. His face contorts in disgust. "Isn't that just moronic?" He laughs. "If I didn't like you, I think I would have left you with a cold wedding bed, and maybe I would have been kinder to us both."

"You're kind of a moron," Jaehyun agrees.

Doyoung squints at him.

"We're not really friends," Jaehyun says quickly. "I'll hold off on the teasing until we are."

"Maybe you should." Doyoung looks at him, not critically, not for something disapprove of. He touches the side of Jaehyun's mouth, and his brow, and the line of his jaw. "I really...don't know what to do with you."

Jaehyun closes his eyes. Not to wait, or to breathe, but to feel. "Whatever you want."

There's a moment, something intangible, and then something solid, lips against his.

Jaehyun sighs, and then the tension between them transforms into something else. Doyoung's hands are at his hips, pulling closer, hungry, and Jaehyun throws his arms around Doyoung's neck and realizes this is what he's been dreaming of.

Something bubbles up, a noise, a moan, and Doyoung is smiling against his mouth, like maybe this is something he was dreaming of, too. Jaehyun wonders if that's true, or wishful thinking.

Truly, Jaehyun has never known Doyoung, if this is even a portion of what he wants.

"I don't want to be happy with you," Doyoung says again, and it hurts less. Jaehyun kisses bruises into his neck and it's more than Jaehyun thought he would ever be allowed. "I tried so hard."

"Why?" Coming up for air.

"Because I'm terrified of you."

"We're too similar." Jaehyun grins at him, and he's happy. Despite their best efforts, Doyoung looks happy too. "In all the worst ways."

Doyoung plays with the hem of his husband’s hoodie. "I still think you're just jealous."

"I still think you resent me," Jaehyun tells him, a whisper.

"I do." After a quiet moment, and Jaehyun sinks again. "But I'll..." He shakes his head. "You can't help it. I'm trying." He puts a hand to Jaehyun's cheek, still red from this afternoon. And it soothes. Jaehyun had never thought Doyoung might soothe.

He leans his forehead on Doyoung's. "That's all I can ask for." Or, perhaps, one more request. "If..."

Doyoung waits, and when Jaehyun doesn't continue, he asks, "What?"

"Will you tell me you love me in the morning?"

A pregnant pause, and Doyoung is careful with his heart but his face is open now, considering. "Do you think I'll regret it?"

Jaehyun laughs. "Of course."

"Alright." Doyoung's hand trails from Jaehyun's cheek to his chest, and then his head sinks into the crook of his shoulder, and they stand there, together. Both pitiful in the same way. "In the morning."

* * *

"I'm frightened."

Jaehyun's mother holds him the month leading up to his wedding, holds him together, but there are days when he needs more than that. When he needs physical arms and a beating heart. "I know, sweetie," she says, petting his hair.

He's too old to cry, but Jaehyun does anyway. He's so frightened. His hands shake. He clings to her. His father is gone. He has no brothers or sisters. His fiancé would rather he was dead in a ditch. He has only her, and his kingdom.

"The future is frightening."

Jaehyun sighs into her chest, shattered. "What will I do when you go?" He'll have nothing, no support. Doyoung, this strange creature, truly scares him. Jaehyun knows that he can handle the barbed words, has dealt with ire all his life, even wrapped up with a pretty ribbon, but this man is poised in a position to burn, to rake him to shreds. Doyoung has power no one else has, because Jaehyun wants it to work so desperately.

Foolishly yearning.

He knows it will never work.

"Surround yourself with people who support you," the Queen says, holding his face in her hands. "Trust the people who gives themselves to you. Be a kind king." She kisses his forehead. "You are so worth loving. The people will fall for you, hopelessly."

Jaehyun holds on to that tighter than she knows.

"Be good, and then you will be happy, undeniably."

* * *

Jaehyun wakes up warmer than he's been in months, since summer left. There is an arm thrown around his waist, and cold feet pressing against his calf, and he's warm.

Doyoung looks up at him, and still — even in the morning, even exhausted bone deep, even expecting the worst — he's beautiful.

"Good morning, Jaehyun," Doyoung says, voice thick with sleep, into his husband's chest. "I love you."

**Author's Note:**

> _Marriage is not_   
_a house or even a tent_
> 
> _it is before that, and colder:_
> 
> _the edge of the forest, the edge_   
_of the desert_   
_the unpainted stairs_   
_at the back where we squat_   
_outside, eating popcorn_
> 
> _the edge of the receding glacier_
> 
> _where painfully and with wonder_   
_at having survived even_   
_this far_
> 
> _we are learning to make fire_
> 
> \- Margaret Atwood (Habitation)


End file.
